Let's Celebrate at Anything But a Card Challenge #50 with a Wedding

Good morning friends,

Today is a sad and happy day for me.

Sad, because today is the LAST installment of Anything But a Card challenge #50 CELEBRATE.  I've only been a design team member there for about a year now and as things progress the team has decided it's time to say goodbye.  I'm sad that we will no longer be together designing for such a great blog, but it's also understandable.

Happy, because I made something to share with you that is very dear to me.  My son is getting married in a month and I made their glasses and a vase for them to Celebrate their wedding.  I love glass etching and my Armour Etch gets used a lot!

Although I did not put a tutorial together for this, I'm sure you are familiar with Armour Etch and what it can do.  If not, please check out some of my previous posts and familiarize yourself with the ease of this product.

Birthday plate 

Bookmark

Jewelry Holder

Re-purposed Liquor bottle

Donation Plaque

Personalized Golf Glasses

Hot Cocoa Bottle

Butterfly Bottle

I guess I've made a few things, LOL and I haven't even blogged about all of them!

Anywhooooo, this is what I did for our current challenge.

I tried to make the words stand out a bit with the orange paper inside the vase.

Etching is very hard to photograph.

The vase will hold some peacock feathers at the table.

Although this may look a bit intimidating, using Armour Etch is a breeze.

I hope you've enjoyed my pictures and my post for out last challenge at Anything But a Card and PLEASE  join in for our last "celebration" challenge.  I look forward to seeing what you create.  Remember, there are only 3 rules.

1.  Create anything but a card

2. Follow the theme "Celebrate"

3. Have FUN!

As always, have a great day and God Bless.

Anything But a Card Challenge #49 - Armour etching book mark

Good morning friends,

welcome to another challenge at Anything But a Card #49 Open Theme.  Today I am showing you the simplest of ideas.  I used to do a lot of mosaic work and have accumulated plenty of these glass tiles.  I may use them again sometime for mosaic work, but I have plenty and could use a couple for this project.  I decided I wanted to make myself a bookmark.  I also wanted to personalize it!  So let's get started:

I took some regular stickers from my stash with my initials and placed them onto my glass tiles.

Using my Armour Etch I applied it all over the entire tile.

Let it set up for about 5  minutes and wipe it off.  See the difference of the etched tile vs the original?  Then just peel the stickers off the tiles.  I did make all 3 of my letters, but only needed the Bs.  

Then I used some No-Sew fabric glue and glued the edges of some ribbon after I measured it against a book and leaving a couple inches longer.

I used some E6000 to glue my tiles to the ribbon and let it set up for 24 hours just to make sure.

And here is my ribbon bookmark.

Hope you've enjoyed my easy peasy tutorial for making a bookmark.  Hopefully you will hop on over to Anything But a Card and join in the fun!  There are only 3 simple rules:

1.  It's an OPEN THEME, so let your imagination run wild.

2.  Create ANYTHING BUT A CARD.

3.  Have FUN!

Have a great day and God Bless.

Dandelion Etched Wine Glasses

Good morning friends,

My soon to be DIL loves dandelions and I wanted to give her a special gift for Christmas.  I'm in love with using Armour Etching Cream and thought I could make her some personalized wine glasses.

I cut a dandelion pattern using my cricut.  I had to cut it in half because it was too big for the wine glasses.

I adhered the first piece to the glass.  I had to make some relief cuts but that's okay, especially with a pattern like this.  Just make sure that you have not openings anywhere in your pattern.

Then I added the second layer to the glass.

I added the etching cream all over the pattern and let it sit up for 10 minutes.

I also etched the stems.  

Now, I do not like to waste anything so I actually scrape the etching cream

 off the glass and put it right back into the bottle.  

I love the look of these

And even the stems look awesome.

She really loved her glasses and wants 4 more to make a set of 6.  Oh yeah!

I hope you've enjoyed my simple glass etching tutorial today and

 would love to hear what personalized item you would make.

As always, have a Great Day and God Bless.

New Beginnings at Anything But a Card

Good morning and welcome to another Anything But a Card post.  This month's challenge is "New Beginnings" which means it's basically up to you on how you want to interpret that.  I thought long and hard on what I wanted to do and decided for my New Year's resolution I would "upcycle" more and with that said, I will give something a "New Beginning"!  So here goes ...

I am a part-time bookkeeper at a bar which is an awesome gig.  Not only for doing the books there but all the goodies I can hoard, er, I mean collect.  Right before Christmas my boss gave me an awesome bottle.  She knows how much I love to create things and she thought I might  be able to do something with it.  Well, of course I can and did.  In fact, I gave it right back to her after I did this :

I started with some left over vinyl that I cut with my Cricut to spell out Jane's bar and used my Armour Etch. 

The bottle on the left is during the day, the bottle on the right at night.

I love how this lights up and makes for a great bar accent.

I added some purple and gold Christmas light in the bottle (yes, she is also a Vikings Fan)

 and now she has a cool accent to put up on her bar.

I think this is a rather cool idea for a "New Beginning" for an old empty booze bottle.

I hope you've enjoyed my post today and please make sure to link up with us over at Anything But a Card.  There are three simple rules

1.Create ANYTHING BUT A CARD

2. Make sure you do something to represent the Challenge "NEW BEGINNINGS"

3. Have FUN!

$12,500 donated in 2014

Good morning friends,

Today I wanted to share a quick post on a Glass Etching Project I made for our Pink Ladies Dart Team!  If you don't already know what the Pink Ladies are all about, let me give you a quick background.  We are a group of Ladies and Gents that get together every Sunday to throw darts and raise money for cancer.  We donate $500, a blanket (that is handmade by one of our Pink Ladies) and sometimes a plant or flowers each time to a "local person" with cancer primarily to help with everyday expenses.  That could be anything from personal items, groceries or gas to get to and from doctor appointments.  It's their money and they can do whatever they want with it.  We occasionally also hold fundraisers to obtain funds that we then give away.

We started this in April of 2014 and by New Years Eve 2014 we gave away $12,500.  

Can you say WOW!!!!

I wanted to give our bar owner who does a tremendous job something to hang in the bar 

to commemorate the accomplishment and let's see what I did:

This is our logo and I cut it using my cricut from some scrap pink vinyl I had left over 

from making all the window decals that we also sold to raise money.  

I laid that on a piece of glass from a frame.

Using the Armour Etch (ing) cream, I slathered a generous amount 

over the vinyl and let it sit for about 10 minutes.

I wanted to commemorate the amount and the date we did that in so I cut that all out 

also on my cricut from Dollar Tree contact paper.  Do NOT waste your precious vinyl.

again slathering a generous amount over the top ...

I do scrape the excessive off with a brush or used credit card and put it right back into my bottle.

NO WASTE!

I then laid the glass over the top of some metallic scrapbook paper and there you have it!

I hope you liked my post today and  if you are at all inclined to donate you can do so by going HERE.

You can find the Bottom's Up Pink Ladies facebook page HERE and we are on Twitter @BUPINKLADIES!

As always, have a great day and God Bless!

Personalized Golf Glasses

Good morning crafters,

I am here today to show you how lucky you can be sometimes.  Well, it's really not that big of a deal, but I'm so super excited.

As most of you know we went to Florida this past May on our family vacation.  We stayed at a beautiful resort near St. Augustine and had a wonderful time.  We went to The Players Golf Tournament and had a fantastic time there also.  At our resort I wandered into the Clubhouse and spotted these amazing glasses that had a raised glass golf ball in the inside.  I so wanted to get them for my guys, but my vacation money was running out and at $20 a PIECE, I just couldn't justify it.  I was so bummed, but we can't always have what we want.  Here comes the best part of this story...yesterday I went junking.  I love going to thrift stores and such and mostly I browse, but yesterday I made a fabulous purchase, actually I made several, (ssshhhhh).  I found these

Identical to what they had in the Gift Shop at the clubhouse.  Want to the know the better part of this story?  Both of them together cost my $1.50.  YES, 75 cents a piece...I'm doing a happy dance.

So, of course I scooped them up immediately and went home and did this... 

I knew I wanted to personalize them so I took some of my scrap vinyl and cut their names with my cricut out with Arial Rounded MT Bold, nothing fancy, just nice letters. 

Placing them nicely on the glasses and 

using my Armour Etch, (you can buy this at Hobby Lobby and if you use a 40% off coupon it will cost you about $13 and you can use it over and over and over), LOVE< LOVE> LOVE> this product.  I painted the etching cream onto the glasses.  Depending on what you are making you may have to do this in sections especially if it's a round object because it does run and you DO NOT want to get any etching cream anywhere on your project except where you intend it to be.  Seriously, even a split second of touching the etching cream anywhere on the glass surface will leave a mark.  Also make sure you use some rubbing alcohol to clean your glass before etching to get any oils from your fingers off.

After only about 5 minutes your cream is ready to be wiped off.  I've been etching glasses for at least 5 years now and have never had to wait for more than 5 minutes.  I simply wipe the cream off with my finger and scrap it back into the bottle.  I've had this bottle of etching cream for about 2 years now and it still works as great as it did the day I opened it. Actually the longer you have your etching cream and depending on how much you use it, it get thicker and thicker and you will have less problems with it "running" on your surface.

And here is my finished project.

Now Steve can go have a gin and tonic while Austyn has a Powerade and they can enjoy watching a golf tournament on tv, as there is ALWAYS one on. 

They both love their glasses (I should have waited for Christmas to give them to them, but I couldn't contain my excitement) and I'm thrilled it only cost me $1.50.  YEAH!

I hope you've enjoyed my post today and make sure to come back over the next couple of weeks because I have some more junking finds to share with you.

As always, have a great day and God Bless.