thoughts (and girly things)

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July 23, 2007

If you're going to drink the beer anyways, supplies are cheap.

It's been a crafty summer, if not a particularly studious one. Maybe if I give my advisor a sleep mask or a bag of some sort he won't be as disappointed in my lack of progress on the thesis. I am trying to either get over my lack of interest in the topic or get up the courage to email him and talk about the idea that is really interesting to me-- of course, he's getting married in Spain and preparing a honeymoon to China... so that makes him slightly less available.

This post is actually supposed to be about craftiness, so let's get on with it! Apparently my sleep masks have been pretty well received at Dandie, so I'm working on making some more. Starting teaching has made me a little less motivated about doing any sewing, but I have three masks ready to bring over, and could maybe make a few more by the end of the week.

I brought them one coffee cozy like the one I made myself a few months ago, but I want to make a couple more of those-- some better ones --to see if people are into the idea.

My latest thing is trying to come up with crafts that some of the local menfolk might be interested in buying. Recently I've settled on the idea of cutting beer bottles into drinking glasses. I'd seen similar glasses around, but I always imagined it might be kind of tricky to actually do. Well, it is and it isn't.

In principle, it's an easy process, and a quick Google of "bottle cutting" gave me some straight forward suggestions. I picked up a bottle cutter at Michael's (complete with an instruction booklet that will put you right off the idea, with its ugly creations) and got cutting. My first bottle broke almost perfectly, but the sanding of the edges was challenging. I was encouraged, and I kept going...

At which point every bottle either wouldn't break, wouldn't break evenly, or cracked ever so slightly along the way. These Boylan's bottles came out pretty well, but the edges are a little uneven (not sharp, though) so I am not quite happy enough with them to sell them:

So far, I've figured out that soda bottles like these are thicker than beer bottles, and so are tough to break along a straight edge. Red Stripe bottles (*hiccup*) are nice and thin, but two of the three I attempted this afternoon cracked a little bit and so aren't going to live up to my expectations. (The third didn't score quite straight to begin with, so I didn't bother continuing the process.)

I'm still quite sure I'll get the hang of it. The problem is, you run out of bottles and so have to empty more, at which point you probably shouldn't be fooling around with broken glass... so it's a bit of a wait between each session. I guess I need volunteers to keep me supplied with lovely bottles on which to practice. Any takers?

Posted by kelseyfrost at July 23, 2007 05:34 PM

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