Hi again,

We are back with yet another Halloween craft for you to do! This one follows the same instructions for our glass etching tutorial. Have a look at those instructions for a more in-depth description of how to etch glass, otherwise read on to find out how we made this simple craft into fun and creepy Halloween decorations.

 

A few weekends ago we went to our local Goodwill and picked up a bunch of empty glass bottles that were each about $1. We wanted to find some unique looking bottles to hold some candy and drinks for a Halloween party. You can also just use any empty glass bottles you have at home as well.

Next we planned out what we wanted to etch onto the bottles. We liked the idea of using creepy ingredients one might use for a potion. We also wanted to do a simple skull and crossbones poison bottle, because you can’t go wrong with that! Since the skull bottle is a little different we will explain it more in depth after the more simple ones.

We used a combination of these etching letters we had used from the previous etching DIY as well as some plain vinyl letters we picked up from a craft store. You have to keep in mind that with the vinyl letters, the etching will be outside as the letters will block the cream, so they’re good for if you want to etch a whole area and have your words blocked out of that. We placed the letters where we wanted them on the bottles and then began to sketch out what we wanted around the letters.

For Rose’s witch fingers bottle she drew a frame on a piece of white paper and then cut it out using blue painters tape. This is the part where we highly recommend you buy some double sided tape so you can stick the frame cutout to one side and then stick the other side right to the bottle. We didn’t have any on hand so we had to improvise a bit. Instead we had to try and stencil and cut out our designs on the non-sticky side of the tape, which got frustrating pretty fast as the tape would just get caught on everything. Plus, you want it to be as sticky as it can be so no etching cream leaks through. Anyways, back to the witch fingers. Rose cut out the frame from painters tape and then stuck that around her letters. Next she slabbed on the etching cream and let sit for 30 minutes.

For Haley’s eye of newt, she used the etching letters to spell out “eye of newt.” We only have one set of the alphabet (and there are 3 e’s in eye of newt), so it took a few rounds of etching and rinsing to get the whole phrase. I’d recommend putting random letters in place of the repeated letters to map out the whole phrase before etching, just to make sure it will fit the way you like. Also, after you finish etching the first round of letters and are ready to move things around to etch the next round, make sure not to remove the letter adjacent to the letter you are adding to keep the alignment how you want it! Once Haley had all the letters etched, she cut out a vine shape and some small leaves using the painters tape and etched that design around the letters. Remember, you want to cut your stencils so you’ll put etching cream on the inside of the design you want.

For the poison bottle, we printed out some skull and crossbones designs we found online. Again, we had a bit of trouble because we did not have double sided tape. We placed tape on the back of the paper design and then cut out both layers. We put some folded up tape on the back of the design and then taped it to the bottle. But there was still a lot of space where the etching cream could leak through, so Rose held the design down tightly while Haley carefully etched around the edges. We let it sit for about 40 minutes and then carefully rinsed it off.

We hope we inspired you with another Halloween craft. This is perfect to serve drinks or different candy in at our party. We are planning on putting those candy eyeballs in the eye of newt bottle and some candy fingers in the witch fingers bottle!