Glass Etched Cookie Jar - My Christmas Gift Ideas Have Officially Started

I am sorry for being away from Full of Great Ideas for so many months, but I have struggled to balance work, life and blog. Blog always fell to the bottom of my to do lists. After months away it stopped being added to the to do list all together. I have not stopped thinking about it or stopped crafting, I just didn't have the time to share what I have done.

As you know, I am a mom to two wonderful kids that are growing up too fast and I didn't want to miss anything.  I realized I was watching life through a camera. Don't you find that? You go to a special event or on a trip and you watch everything that is going on through the view finder! Yes I have some great photos, but the experience is not the same. I had to step back and  reevaluate.

Well I hope to be back to blogging on somewhat of a regular basis. My posts might not have as many photos or be as complicated. But I will try my best.

I thank everyone for their notes and comments wondering where I was and I am sorry for not responding. I really do appreciate them.

Well on to my first post now that I am back...my glass etched cookie jar.

My close friend had her birthday last week and I wanted to make her something small to celebrate it.   She is not one to bake and always appreciates when we drop by with homemade items, so my kids suggested cookies. I had been planning for our second annual Homemade Christmas (I know you all just gasped with the fact I am planning Christmas already, but that is me) and I had pinned an etched cookie jar. Sorry can't share the pin because I got smart this year and I hid my Christmas pin board. I found out the hard way last year that my family follows me on Pinterest and none of my ideas were surprises.

I knew I wanted to put their monogrammed initial on the cookie jar so it could be used for other items after the cookies were all gone. I designed three images and my children picked the easiest one, the EileenCaps font letter Z. I know most of you do not have a Cricut or Silhouette machine to cut your own letters, but this can be done with wall vinyl or stickers you can buy at the dollar store too.

It is pretty, isn't it?

I bought the cookie jar for $6 at Walmart. It was an Anchor brand I believe. To be honest with you I should have looked closer at it before I opened the packaging because it did not have the rubber ring around the lip to seal the jar nicely. It was reasonably priced and a perfect size, but I would have preferred to spend a few more dollars to have it seal.

I cut the 4 inch square design out of vinyl with my Cricut and stuck it on the cookie jar. Because the jar is straight up and down, I did not have any problems with the vinyl laying flat! This was the easiest placement of the vinyl I have ever had.

There are many options for everyone to do this craft even without an electronic cutter. You could spell out words like cookies, a name, funny saying etc with stickers from the Dollar store and there are people on Etsy who sell vinyl for a few dollars if you are interested in purchasing it.

Using a foam brush, I put a thick layer of the glass etching cream all over the area to be etched. I made sure to lift the cookie jar up to look at it from the back side through light to see if I missed any spots or corners. As you can see, I lay the cookie jar on a crumpled old towel to keep it from rolling.

Now here is the hardest and longest part of this project, walk away for 25 minutes. My bottle of etching cream has warning labels covering the instructions so I don't know what the bottle suggests, but over the past while I found this to be the best amount of time.

Here is an important tip...once the time is up, use the same foam brush, and carefully scoop up the etching cream and put it back in the bottle. Someone recommended it to me in my comments and I have done it ever since. This stuff is pretty expensive if you don't use a 40% off coupon so you might as well save as much of it as you can. I have been etching gifts for years and have barely used any of the jar because of this!

Once you get as much off as possible, run the entire thing under water. Work as quickly as possible because if the etching cream sits on another spot of glass it will create a shadow. Don't worry too much about this, just run it under a good stream of water and scrub it off.

So here is the etched cookie jar. It is hard to get a photo of it, but I think you can get an idea how amazing it turned out!

My kids and I baked a batch of the best chewy chocolate chips cookies in the world an filled the jar with them. We tied a bow around the lip of the jar and called it a birthday gift!

I think this is going to be my go-to gift for this year. Teachers, friends, coworkers will all be seeing cookie jars under their trees this year.

What do you think? How would you feel if you got this as a gift?

Stephanie at Full of Great Ideas.