DIY Monogrammed Gift

Recently, my sweet aunt, Auntie Mo, let me borrow her Cricut. Oh my goodness, it is the coolest little cutter ever, & I am so grateful to her that she is letting me play with it - thank you so much Auntie Mo! I love you!

The first project that I made was a housewarming gift for my sweet friend Shelley & her husband, Scott.  They just moved to Austin from Dallas - and I couldn't be more excited about it!

The gift was actually really easy & inexpensive to make, & I think it turned out so cute.

The tin bucket included a pumpkin spice candle, set of 3 kitchen towels, polka dot oven mit, 2 etched wine glasses, & wine bottle stopper (etched with an R but hard to see in the pic).

I first cut 2 Rs using the cricut & adhesive vinyl, & attached it to the tin bucket & candle.  This took several tries (& several more cuts of new Rs) because of the thinness of some parts of the R. 

I used the leftover vinyl backing as a stencil for the wine glasses. I stuck the vinyl stencil to each wine glass, & smoothed out all the bubbles.  Next I applied etching cream to the glasses, straight onto the stencil.  After 10 minutes, I wiped it off, rinsed with soap & water, peeled off the stencil, & washed again. See, super easy, & look how pretty!

Last I printed the card from my computer. And that's all I did!  Put it all together & it was ready to go.  

Total cost was $17!

Here is a breakdown of the costs, and where each item was purchased.

Tin bucket: Target - $2.50
Wine glasses: Dollar Tree - $1.00 X2 = $2.00
Candle: Home Goods - $3.99 (same candle sold at Target for $8.99) I peeled off the label with goo gone.
Kitchen towel set: Target -  $3.99
Oven Mit: Target - $1.32 (on sale from $3.99)
Wine bottle topper: Hobby Lobby - $3.20 (used 40% coupon - orig was $7.99)
Total cost: $17.00

So, what do you  think?

PS:
The etching cream is from Hobby Lobby & the brand is Armour Etch. It was $8.99 for a small bottle, but I used my 40% off coupon. I'm not counting this in the total price for the gift because I only used a tiny amount, & plan to use it for a lot more!

If you use etching cream, whatever you scrape off can go right back into the bottle - so I'll probably not be running out of this stuff for a while! This was a tip I found online.

The adhesive vinyl is from Michael's - I'm not including this in the price since I also plan on using this for several more projects as well. I can't remember the cost, but I couldn't use a coupon since it's a cricut brand product.  I've since learned that you can order vinyl online pretty cheaply.  A great tip I found online is to use contact paper as transfer paper for the vinyl - it's way cheaper & can be found at Target for about $6 for a giant roll.

To see what else I've monogrammed, go HERE.

Linking up HERE.