Happy Birthday...

We don't have an imminent birthday...our next family birthday is in about four weeks...but I have wanted a Birthday plate for a while.  I think it would be fun to have a special plate for to use on our birthdays.  I've also been wanting to try glass etching, so I decided to combine the two...

I started with a plain glass plate that I bought at Hobby Lobby.  Using my Silhouette, I cut a Birthday cake shape for the bottom of the plate.

I also cut out the words "Happy Birthday".  This is the second vinyl cut...I was so busy making sure I had the arch of the words correct, that I forgot I needed the mirror image. 

Once I had all the vinyl applied and I made sure there wasn't any glass exposed, I put on the glass etch...

I tried to get the material evenly distributed across the vinyl.  As it turns out, I should have used a thicker coat and worked a bit harder to make sure it was evenly distributed.

It's a little hard to see, but here's our Birthday plate.  I am really happy with the design, and for my first time using the glass etch, I think it turned out pretty well.  I can say that my boys are really excited to use the plate on their birthdays.  My son and I share the next Birthday, I wonder who's going to get to use it first!

How do you make birthdays special in your house?