Etched mirrored ornaments

Hello, my lovelies! Today I am featured on The BugBytes blog. I hope you will hop over there and become a follower. Pam is one of the sweetest people I've had the pleasure of meeting through my love of crafting and she has some of the most amazing Design Teams. I am so honored to be part of this group. Now, on to my project, which I created for an ornament swap I participated in just yesterday. I hope you will enjoy!

I purchased this pack of mirrored ornaments at Michaels.

I removed the silver cord to make it easier to etch.

Next I pulled out my Cricut vinyl and transfer tape. A tip about vinyl. I once read on Diane Campbell's (Capadia Designs) blog that she thought Cricut vinyl worked best for etching. And I must agree. Resist the tremendous urge you will have to use less expensive vinyl. Etching is not something you can un-do and I have found that I get better results with the Cricut vinyl.

After pulling out this brushed silver vinyl, it seemed the texture was different so I went and pulled out some blue instead. It was a wise decision. Not only was the texture what I needed, it showed up better on the mirrored surface.

I laid out my design on my Gypsy using the following Cricut cartridge cuts and sizes:

George and Basic Shapes-Circle cut at 2.49" using Silhouette feature

Winter Lace-snowflake cut at .87"

Birthday Cake-2011 cut at 1.00"

I welded the star, the "2" and a "1" to the inside of the circle. Not sure if I was going to like the negative or the positive of the design better, I decided to etch both before deciding. I had 6 ornaments and only needed 5 for the exchange so I felt I had one extra to test.

Here I am applying a nice thick coat of etching cream. I let this cream sit on it for like 30 minutes because I was busy doing something (watching tv). I rinsed off the cream under warm running water and wiped dry with a paper towel.

Next the big reveal! I pulled off the vinyl and discarded it.

I decided I liked both the negative and positive etched designs so I did the rest of my ornaments using both. Which saved me lots of time and vinyl by using all the cuts.

By the way, I placed the circle slightly off center and liked the effect a lot. Here are my 6 etched mirrored ornaments.

I didn't just want the front to be pretty, so I decided I needed to decorate the back of the ornament as well. Using white smooth Bazill cardstock, I cut 2 snowflake doily cuts from the Martha Stewart Elegant Cake Art cartridge at 2.75" and 1 snowflake doily shadow cut also at 2.75"

I ran one of the doily cuts and the shadow cut through the Cuttlebug using the Swiss Dots embossing folder.

I adhered the embossed snowflake doily to the unembossed snowflake doily using pop dots. I adhered these two layers to the shadow (unembossed side) also using pop dots.

 I centered the ornament on the front side of the shadow cut and using a pencil, marked the hole.

 Next I punched a hole through all three layers of cardstock.

 Using my hot glue gun I adhered the mirrored ornament to the cardstock.

I threaded a lavendar organza ribbon through the hole and tied a knot.  I added a lavendar sparkly adhesive raindot to the center of the snowflake.

Here is the back of the ornament:

Here is the front of the negative etched ornament.

Thank you for stopping by!

Carole