Etch your own toasting flutes. Mmm… toast…

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glass etching 013 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)

Recently Megan featured a roundup of awesome toasting flutes. Here's a DIY option to make your own personalized awesome toasting flutes with glass etching.

For my example, I'm using the images of a piece of bread and a toaster because together they make toast… and you'll use the glasses for your toasts… GET IT!? Toasts!?

Seriously, glass etching is a super simple craft — you'll love it!

What you need:

The first step is boring but necessary: clean your champagne glasses so they're all ready to go!
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Next print your design. Take the time to cut it out and even tape it to the glasses so you can get a feel for the size. If necessary, adjust the size of your design and reprint it.
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Now tape your design to your Con-Tact brand contact paper (mine has a woodgrain pattern!) and use your X-Acto knife to cut your design all the way through the printer paper AND the contact paper.
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Next peel the backing off of the contact paper and adhere it to the glass. The cutting and sticking is all a bit trickier than it seems because it is the HOLE that gets etched — just take your time and think it through. For the bread design I first put on the piece of contact paper that had two bread-shaped holes, then put smaller bread-shaped stickers inside that, leaving just the thin crust-like outline exposed.
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Use additional contact paper to cover the other exposed parts of the glass. I even put some on the base so that if the etching cream drips my glasses will be protected.
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Now it is time to apply the glass etching cream. Following the directions on the bottle, cover your exposed glass with the cream. It is better to dab the cream on rather than brush it so that the cream doesn't get up under the edges of your design.
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Leave the cream on for as long as the bottle tells you to — I personally had to wait only five minutes!
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Rinse the cream off and remove the contact paper.
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Yeah! The finished glasses look amazing!
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Big thanks to my good friend Joy for her help with this post! <3

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