Greatest Idea Ever!

Ignore the smudges please!

When I originally saw the idea for this here, I thought, "That is the greatest idea ever!"  Okay, so I was a little excited.  I really wanted to do this project.  You don't need a lot of stuff for it.  Just glass etching cream, a brush, and contact paper to make a stencil. 
In reality you don't need a Cricut machine, you just need a friend with one (thank you, Tera!) which made it all very simple.  Haha, you actually can do it without using a one to make a stencil and the other blog shows you how, but I really wanted those crisp lines.
You need to choose a font and cut out a piece of contact paper and have the magic machine make you a stencil.  Remember that you are doing it on the bottom of the dish so you will need to have the stencil made to stick on backwards so that it can be read through the dish.  Thankfully Tera has a good craft brain and uses her machine a lot and was able to figure out that part in seconds because I would have been there for quite a while.  You may want to practice on some scrap paper to make sure it will all fit nicely on your dish.  You need to remember to save the little pieces inside the letters (in the "A" and "D" for me). 
The only part I found to be tricky is putting the actual contact paper stencil onto the dish.  I was trying not to be to anal about it, but I found it a little difficult to get it centered the way I wanted to.  Thankfully I didn't destroy the stencil when I took it off 5-6 times and moved it around until I got the placement good enough.  Notice I did not say perfect.
Once you have the stencil on and have pressed down the edges really well you can glop on the etching cream.  The bottle says to wear gloves and long sleeves.  I wore an old tie-dyed tank top and no gloves and I did not die, but I was pretty careful.  Now, the bottle says to leave it on for 10 minutes but I read on several blogs of other people who have done this and found out that it is better to leave it on longer.  I left it on for an hour.  This gave me time to play a couple quests in The Sims Medieval since Olivia was in bed.

The two I did last night.

After an hour I washed off the etching cream in the sink using cool water and a paper towel to rub it a little.  This is the time when I started to panic.  As it turns out you can't really see the etching very much when it is wet!  I was freaking out and super disappointed for a couple of minutes but then I noticed that I could actually start to see it after all. 
I really enjoyed this project and since I still have a lot of expensive etching cream left I decided that I will plan to do this for the ladies in my family for Christmas.  The interesting part of being a Tandy around here is that I will have to use initials for the other ladies (we even have more than one K. Tandy and S. Tandy in the area!) so we'll see how I make this work.  In any case, I think it will be a nice gift.  Also, this is a great idea for a wedding present!