etched glass plate using stamping supplies

I left off yesterday with a teaser about a project that I'd worked on. Here's a peek at how I made the connections.


The above photo is currently gracing my desktop. I love the delicate look of azalea petals and I particularly like the way the setting sun lit some of them from behind.


This is the part of the photo that caught my eye. That's the translucent sparkle that I was talking about--almost a ground glass look, but softer.

That reminded me of a project that I wanted to share--ground glass-->etched glass. That wasn't too far a jump, eh? So anyway, some time ago I'd seen some crafty projects made using etching cream and stamping supplies. I'd tucked that info away and got around to trying it a couple of weeks ago. I think that the most straightforward tutorial that I've seen is in the resources section of Splitcoast Stampers: Emboss Resist Etching. I more or less followed those same steps to make the following....


This is an 8" clear glass plate. I wanted to start with something that had a nice flat area for me to work on. I didn't take photos along the way, but I'll walk through what I did. It was actually fairly simple.

First I cleaned the back of the plate well, removing any labels, adhesive, oils, fingerprints etc. I then chose my stamps--the Highland cow and thistle are by Scottish Borders Stamping. I decided to make the etched background in the shape of one of the Nestabilities mega curved rectangle dies by Spellbinders, and I picked the size that would fit nicely with my stamps. I pulled out my Big Shot, cut that shape from clear contact paper, and used the negative part of my die cut to act as the frame for the images. I removed the paper backing and stuck that down well on the backside of the plate, taking care that all of the inside edges were well adhered so that no cream would seep underneath when I got to that step.

The Versamark and some regular old embossing powder came out next. I stamped and heat embossed the images on the back of the plate inside my framed area. It did take much longer than usual to melt the powder, so it's good to have some patience set aside for this part. :-)

Once that was done, I pulled out the etching cream and applied it over the whole area inside my frame and on top of the embossing, taking care to try to spread the stuff evenly and get into all of the curves and corners of my frame. Set it aside for five minutes and let it do its stuff.

Over to the sink now to rinse off the cream. When it first comes off, it looks like nothing happened. Thankfully, I'd read that this would be the case! No panic here, or at least not much. ;-) You don't really appreciate the etching effect until you pull off the contact paper, then TADA! You can see that the etching cream worked its magic. Whew!

Now some of my embossing actually began to come off as I'd rinsed the plate; the rest scraped off easily with some extra rubbing and a bit of scraping with a fingernail. One last soap and water bath and it was ready to be sent off!

Here it is one more time, now that you know what you're looking at.


So yeah, Judie, this was part of your birthday present and I know you occasionally come by here, so I didn't want to post about this earlier and spoil the surprise. Glad you like it. :-)

I think this is a really fun project and can easily think of many more possibilities. By the way, the etching cream (Armour) is kinda pricey. I bought mine at Michael's and used a coupon, so that helped. I didn't find that I needed any extra tools for applying the cream other than a cheapo 1" foam brush. I've seen that there are etching creams that you can reuse (Etchall)--that might be worth looking into. Being able to salvage and reuse the cream for other projects sounds great to me, and I think they cost about the same as this stuff, but I've only seen it online so far, so I can't use a coupon to buy it. Decisions, decisions.... It's a tradeoff , as usual. :-)