Glass Etching

Do you know how hard it is to take pictures of etched glass? It's hard. I must have taken these pictures 20 time and they still didn't turn out great. Oh well. When Daniel and I got married, someone gave us a 9 x 13 pan with our last name etched on the bottom. It was my favorite pan. Sadly, Daniel put it on the stove to wait for the oven to preheat. Then went to cook something on the stove top. He turned on the wrong burner and my beautiful, personalized pan was shattered into a million pieces. So I decided to make my own. I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again. I LOVE MY SILHOUETTE!!! Hands down, the best Christmas gift I ever got. Way to go Daniel!! I made my little design, cut it out in vinyl. Put it on the pans and put some Armour Glass etching on it and voila! Personalized pans.

I did learn a few things along the way though. 1st you really have to glob it on. It needs to be thick. Second, the blogs that say you only have to leave it on for 10 minutes are lieing. You really need to let it sit for 30 minutes to 1 hr.

It's hard to tell, but this is my pie pan and it says 'A Sweet Treat!'

This last one is super hard to see, but it's the side of the pie pan and has our last name on it. My sister and I did all these together and hers turned out super cute. Now I just want to go around etching everything!

Initial Wall Decor

I saw this super cute oval frame at a thrift store and since they are hard to find, I bought it for $1. It was the classic picture frame gold color that I didn't love. But I waited until I decided what I wanted to do with it, then I painted it. I have been totally in love with the latest robins egg blue phase. And it just happens to be one of the colors in my room. So I decided to paint the frame that color and antique it with the General Finishes, van dyke brown glaze effects. Someone in Utah send me more of that! I got it from the Wood Connection and I'm almost out!! This was my 1st time priming anything and it worked out so much better then all my other spray paint projects. I'm converted.

I looked everywhere for the right B to go in the frame. I was unsuccessful and settled on this one. I'm still not in love with it, but if I come across the right one, it's easily replaced.

I do like the colors though. It goes perfectly with our bedroom.

See what I mean about the font? Just don't love it. But, I am pleased with the overall product.

Silhouette Pendants & Resin

I've seen a lot of decoration with silhouettes lately and thought they were really cute. Many of the tutorials I found gave game complicated instructions on how to photograph your child then trace by hand and cut out by hand which I just thought sounded like too much work. I finally found a tutorial on how to do all that with photoshop. From there, it was super easy to open the picture in my silhouette studio and have it cut in vinyl. The only tricky part was getting the scrapbook paper to fit in the pendant just right. I knew the dimensions of the pendant and just sized down from there. I made several different sizes and cut them out on scratch paper first. I found the perfect size, copied it 3 times and sized the silhouettes to fit inside. I did have to use YES paste to glue the paper in the pendant. Then I put the vinyl silhouette on and added another coat of YES paste because I didn't know how the vinyl would react to the resin. I mixed up the resin and poured it on. It's supposed to degas on its own and remove all the bubbles, but the next morning there were still some bubbles which I foolishly attempted to remove with a hair dryer, which created more bubbles. So then I attempted to use a pin and pop them. Well that just pulled some of the resin up. Finally I decided to just leave it alone. It dried and is far from perfect, but I'm pleased enough with it to wear it. I think I might try a bracelet next time.

Any suggestions out there on how to remove bubbles without pulling the resin up?