Experimentation with glass & ceramics

I had a blue bottle and a hammer. And then I had lots and lots of blue bottle bits. I pressed some into unfired porcelain, and then set some in the recess of a stoneware box lid. (I might etch the lid. Maaaybe.)

They turned out well, I think:

Beads, just under 3/4" and 1" tall.

Box! The stuff on the box is sprayed cobalt carbonate, but it's totally not blue. Oh well. The lid came out very nice, though:

Isn't that hot?

I'd put glass shards in the recess (about 1/4" deep), and drizzled hot wax over it to make sure no one would accidentally dump broken glass all over if they happened to bump the piece. (The wax burned out way at the beginning of the firing cycle.)

Disappearing Cheshire Cat shot glass!

I've been working at this idea for awhile: when etched glass is in contact with liquid, it becomes nearly transparent again. I thought about what designs would work well with this idea, and I hit upon the Cheshire Cat. I etched the cat inside the glass, but etched the grin on the outside, so when you pour water into it, everything disappears, leaving just the grin.
I plan on making a much cleaner/neater/preciser glass sometime, but for now, the concept comes through fine. (There's a video of the glass in action, if you scroll to the bottom of this post. And for low-bandwidth folks, there's a hilariously crappy animated gif instead.)

Before liquid

Pour booze in, and voila!
(It's water, actually)

Video of water being poured in!

I warned you it was hilariously crappy

Quick update: champaign flutes, metal rose, shirts

Pair of champagn flutes: one side with Bride and Groom The other side with initials, interlocked rings, and wedding date

Aluminum rose: circular sheet aluminum, approx 18 ga. Brass threaded rod and steel nuts.

Three shirt logos:
And shots of the tshirts, for size approximation.
The SPQR shirt is a dark heather grey. The Greek shirt is a light dusty moss (I think it's called "willow") and the Good Idea shirt is a turquoise shade.

It's kind of hard to convey colors in an unlit room with lousy photography.

Pirates! Booze! What could be better?

Pirates are awesome. Shot glasses are awesome. Pirate shot glasses are AWESOME.
I rest my case:

It's a single glass with five designs
From the left, going clockwise:
Blackbeard, Jack Sparrow, Long John Silvers, Sir Edmund Drake.

Oh, look, MORE glass

MWFencing Club "logo"

(It's a stylized "MW" with a "F" in the middle.)

Canadian maple leaf
(You may not be willing to take a bullet for your country, but you can take a shot instead.)

Teabox!

Sorry, it doesn't have teeth, but it is classy.

I had bought a basswood box from the craftstore (I think it cost less than 2$) and taken a coping saw to it, cutting a window into the top of the box. I had installed a pane of glass in it and then tossed it in the faculty/student lounge to hold tea.
And then I got bored or something, and took it back, removed the glass and etched the chinese/japanese characters for (suprise!) "Tea" and "Box" on it.

Here's the box with tea in it.
It's about 8 inches wide. I don't recall the exact dimensions.

Though it does look very nice, don't be fooled: it's a the box is of a light wood, and was very, very cheap. I wasn't all that accurate with the coping saw, either, so the cut lines aren't crisp. I did sand a polish and burnish the box, and waxed it too, so it's loads classier than what it started out as.

(The box is now back in the lounge and stocked with tea. )

Biology and drinking don't mix-- academia is not, in fact, soluble in alcohol.

So in Costa Rica, we couldn't go five minutes without "bromeliad" or "epiphyte" being said. In a stroke of genius (or heat stroke of genius, I'll let you decide), we decided this would make an awesome drinking game.

I give you:

It's a shot glass with a bromeliad-in-a-tree (aka: epiphyte).

Three Stages of Drinking

Images pulled and tweaked from The Bunny comic

Oops, forgot to toss this one up earlier: Know Thyself

"Know Thyself" pulled from Arkham Asylum inspired by Delphic inscription, popularly attributed to every Pre-Socratic Ever And Their Mothers.

Feb. 12 == Darwin Day

Inspired by Putting-Off-Studying-For-An-Evolution-Exam and QoW- Darwin Cartoon

Calvin and Hobbes!

It strikes me as a bad thing that I have to superglue and tape my cuts shut on my fingers. The two deeper cuts don't really hurt, but they're going to take awhile to heal. The really annoying cut is a much shallower cardboard-cut from, of all things, a microwavable-macaroni&cheese box. Oh the ignominy!
Despite these cuts, though, I have sucessfully finished (with ample aid from Trillian):

(J.CALVIN&CALVIN) & (HOBBES&T.HOBBES)

(There are two glasses, each etched with two images. The two Calvins are on the same glass, two Hobbes on the other.)

Shots IV: More philosophers

Hey, I have been doing stuff besides shot glasses. It's really hard to bring these things around, so my chainmail is still my portable anti-narcolepsy. (Turkish roundweave! Eee~)

(I'll be trying to get better photos someday.)

John Calvin & Thomas Hobbes (keep watching, I'm thinking of doing the cartoon Calvin & Hobbes on the reverse of these glasses!)

Locke & Rousseau

Dostoevsky

My philosophy department loves these

BATMAN!

John Smith's map sketch of the Jamestown fort. (I blame historic preservation.)

Kierkegaard & Socrates.

Hume & Kant.

We might see a trend here... Philosophers + Anime

Pika-pika!

Newcomers to my philosophers line: Descartes on the left, Spinoza on the right.

Full Metal Alchemist's Cross, A penguin, the kanji for "wine" (Sake).

Shots of shots! Biohazard, pony, German Idealists!

Biohazard! Horse!

German Idealists! Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche.

Etched shot glasses! The squarish ones (Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche & the horse) are just under 2.5" tall and hold 2oz. The round one is 2.25" tall and is a 1.5 oz I think. The horse and biohazard are actually in pairs, but I only photographed one from each set. More eventually.

Glass etching & Hats!

Technically, I've got several more hats and some other etched glass projects done, but I don't have photo evidence for those yet. I do have photo evidence for the latest completed item, something I pretty much had no hand in making: (read: Trillian did all the work)

Corsair Cola mug! (& A closer, clearer shot of the lettering)

Actually, you can have some hat pictures too:

Lobster!

Mouse/Yuki & Cow/Not-actually-Hatsuharu

Lion!

(I discuss how I made these on Instructables)

Silly hats & more!

It started out with a BSed-at-3am-in-the-dark prototype penguin cap.
Then I made a second, better penguin hat.
Then I realized that the hat base could be ... well, used as a hat base for stuff.
So I raided a fabric store for fleece and several hours later, I had hats.


We have, going clockwise: a penguin with flipper-earflaps, Roman Legionnaire helm with cheekplates that work as ear flaps, and Cthulhu-hat, complete with squiggly face and wings. (I haven't quite finished him, actually. A few hand sewing bits haven't happened yet. Also the eyes...)

Fun fact: it's my Nietzsche plushie doll that's wearing the penguin hat. You can see a little bit of his grey trousers under the left wing of Cthulhu.

(I discuss how I made these on Instructables)

I had a few caffeinated drinks and now I'm running a dozen projects, most of them silly hats, but a few non-hat ones. Like the glass vase I etched. The thing is a single flower (or so) rose-plum tinted vase with (suprise!) a rose etched on it.

Sorry, the glare off the glass renders the design hard to see. But it seemed lonely and I didn't have any random flowers to put in the vase. But I did have alot of wire around. A few minutes with pliers and voila-- wire rose. It's really 3-D, so the photo just makes it look like a skeletal crumpled up tinfoil ball. Bah.

On the left is a close up of the flower portion of the etch. It's definitely a stylized image. I found a nice design that's meant to be a tattoo, stretched it, tweaked it and then etched it. I think I like it.