My father and father-in-law have a pretty good sense of humor about the often difficult task of child-rearing, so for Father’s Day this year I decided to send them the ‘manly' gift of beer steins and peanuts. (Yes the whole “nuts” and “dad” thing is becoming a trend with me.. I know..)

If you wanted a slightly more serious version of this gift idea you could just give the a personalized mug or stein without the nuts, but I wanted to be a little over-the-top.

I used my silhouette to make the stencils for the mugs, but if you don’t have one there are other ways of making stencils for etching.

The etching process is super easy, I was always intimidated before, but now that I have it under my belt, I will definitely be etching a lot more stuff!

First I started with these mugs.  The large one from the dollar store ($1) and the small one from Ikea ($1.29).

I cut the stencils out of vinyl (from the Silhouette etching kit) and applied them to the glasses:

Then I applied etching cream with a cotton swab (again I used Silhouette brand out the etching kit, but I have also heard good things about Armour Etch if you don’t need the whole kit):

Make sure the cream covers evenly.. any gaps or bubbles will give you an uneven finish.  (Every 10 seconds or so I would re-swirl the cream around with the swab to make sure everything was covered.)

You can scrape any excess cream back into the container and re-use it (I didn’t have a lot of extra as you can see but you can apply it more heavily if you feel more comfortable with it).  I then ran it under running water.

Don’t try to wipe it off since you will inevitably get some off the edges of your stencil and mark up the glass.  The water will immediately neutralize the acid.

I left it on the mugs about a minute and a half, You can leave it longer, but I was happy with the look after 1:30.

Remove the stencil and that is all there is to it:

On my dad’s stein I wrote his name on one side:

and put the German eagle on the other (this is a beer STEIN after all..):

On my father in law’s mug I wrote his first name on one side and “World’s Greatest Grandpa” on the other.

I loved how they came out, but I wanted to fill them with something:


Here is the image if you would like to use it (I used the print and cut setting on my Silhouette to make them but you could just print them and cut them out and then punch the hole with a hold punch)

I love the final product.  Funny and personal and CHEAP (total cost is less than $5 for two!)  
Bottoms up!

Love you dad!

Sharing at these parties.