Personalized Pyrex

Here is what I did this morning. Well, I did 2 dishes for a bridal shower first. While I had everything out, I personalized a dish for us. Like the sawtooth star block on the left?

My b-friend, Kairle, reignited my interest in doing these. Check out the right sidebar on her blog for a tutorial in etching glass. I had made some in the past. Tomorrow night I'm going to a bridal shower for a friend's soon-to-be DIL, so I thought these would be nice.

I etched another older Pyrex dish I have, but the etching barely took. You have to get right up there and squint to see it. My theory is that it doesn't work on dishes that have seen much use. The ones I did for the shower were right out of the plastic. They etched beautifully. The dish above is fairly new. I'm not sure if it gets tiny scratches sliding in and out of the oven, or if it's the washing that affects its etchability, but there you have it.

The one above is a 10" x 15" pan. If you buy pans to etch, examine the bottom of the pan to see how much writing is there. Your etching will not look good if it's competing with a lot of other printing.

Unfortunately, the set I got for the bride-to-be is Anchor Hocking. I got them (a set of 2, one 9 x 13 and one 8" square) because they came with serving baskets. I had to make the name much smaller than I would have liked to because they have so much writing on the bottom of the dishes. Consider yourself warned!

The hard part is cutting out the contact paper w/o slipping all over the pan with the exact-o knife. For the quilt block, I used a metal ruler to be my guide for the knife. Worked like a charm. Those straight lines are harder to do freehand than the curved ones, but the metal ruler makes it a piece of cake.

~Joan, eager to do some hand sewing later this afternoon