Money Monday!

This post is sort of...sweeping the nation. It's been viewed several hundreds of times, by all of you, my sweet blog friends, and by scores of MOPS moms who found it through a link posted on the MOPS national website. Hellloooooooooo MOPS!

I've gotten several emails about the project- some from sweet MOPS moms who want to etch with their groups, some from you domestic divas doing this at your own house. I thought since you all had the same questions, and I'd been giving the same tips over and over, I'd just do a post about it for all the world to see, because clearly, a lot of you might be wondering the same things.

I feel I should amend some of my instructions, for those of you who plan to lead an entire group of women through the project.

If you are going to Mass-Etch:

DO NOT do the "make your own ghetto-template" technique!!! This is great if you're doing this at home by yourself and you use the edges of some leftover scrapbooking stickers, but IT WOULD BE AN EXPENSIVE PAIN to do this for a huge group.

Instead, get yourself a scrapbooking punch, like this, in any shape you want for the group, and yes, they come in many sizes of squares and circles as well. You might want to give them 2 or 3 options. Someone in your group probably already has a bunch of them at home. If you're making a craft with that many women, the $9.99 punch would be WELL worth it!!!

The Michael's website some of you referenced gave the idea of using masking tape to make a rectangle or square, but I promise you, that would end badly for most of your moms- that takes talent, patience and time to get a good-looking border, and as we all know, MOPS projects tend to get a little crazy, with so many women working at once. It will be a pain, I promise. All those sweet MOPS will look up at you with puppy dog eyes pleading for you to come fix their project when it doesn't come together right. Trying to get a masking tape border to fit straight on the side of a curved surface (most of you are doing votives or wine glasses) would just NOT work well. Trust me.

Then, get enough contact paper at your craft store, and cut it into squares about 1/2" larger than what you will be punching out. Then, the moms can either punch out their choice of shape there at the meeting, or you can even have many pre-punched to streamline their process.

And of course, don't forget to emphasize how important it is for them to keep the surface really clean, or their etching will be smudged!

Do still use cardstock stickers if you want to. They'll work great.

And, some people wondered about how much etching cream they'd need for a typical MOPS group. I'd say, you would most definitely get by with the one large container, but for convenience you may want to get two smaller ones, so the MOPS don't all have to flock around the same one. Make sure they know to do it evenly and super-thick, and wait longer than 5 minutes- 10 is better, I think. And, I know, the bottle says wear gloves. I never do. It hasn't ever irritated my skin. Obviously, I never touch it, until I'm rubbing it off under the water. As long as no one makes lip gloss out of it, you'll be fine.

There you have it, MOPS. And if you do this project with your group, could you please send pictures? I'd love to see what you come up with, and post them on the site.

Happy Monday!