Engraving Flasks

The struggle of figuring out what to get for someone who has everything has been around as long as gift giving holidays themselves.  I love giving handmade gifts, but let's face it, they're not always practical.  Luckily for me, a few months ago, my boyfriend casually mentioned that he didn't own any flasks, and he thankfully didn't go out and buy one for himself.  I figured a plain steel flask would be a little boring, and Casey's not super into all the cheesy booze quotes that can be found on most novelty flasks.  He's a bit more snobby classy when it comes to his whiskey, so I figured a personalized flask with his name on it would be the best course of action.  Besides, this way I could experiment with this cool stainless steel etching technique I saw on Pinterest, and he doesn't have to worry about anyone stealing his alcohol.


The first thing I did was order the flasks. I decided on this six pack from Amazon, since I figured I would need one to practice on, I would probably mess at least one up, I didn't know how many I wanted to make in the first place, and I have my own 21st birthday coming up (29 days, but who's counting?). I also picked up a funnel, but that's another story.

My initial setup

If I learned anything from high school physics, it's that Christmas lights are a great source of cheap rubber coated wire in a pinch.

The next thing I did was assemble the mechanism.  I used this tutorial as a guideline, and kind of adjusted things as I went along.  I eyeballed the salt and vinegar solution and stirred it with a cotton swab for the test flask.  The most important thing I learned from that is that the solution became more potent the longer it sat.  The first etching didn't go so well, but after the sodium and chloride were allowed to fully dissociate overnight, the next few sets went a lot faster.

I read that the current was too small to do any damage to humans, but I wrapped my fingers in electrical tape just in case.  It ended up being unnecessary.

The first couple marks I made were just to play around and test out the etching mechanism.  Then, I practiced using stickers to make a stencil.  I saw this guy on YouTube who said that nail polish was actually the perfect paint to use, since it won't let the current pass through and, in my case, was readily available. Looking back, I probably should have used white because not all of it was dissolved when I put the acetone on it, but a subtle hint of red isn't very detracting.

Anyway, I first tried putting the stickers on, painting the nail polish on top, then immediately removing the stickers.  Most of the nail art tutorials on Instagram do this, so I figured it must give a cleaner line than waiting for it to dry.  I was wrong.  It smudged a lot, and made a huge mess.  What worked much better was to allow the polish to dry overnight before I tried to take the stickers off, and it gave a much cleaner relief.

The first flask I did for Casey turned out a little more rough than I had liked.  I took the capital C and D stickers, stuck them to the flask, used electrical tape to tape out a square around them, then just went to town burning the metal away.  I stippled the cotton more than I rubbed it for this one, so it ended up looking vaguely like hammered metal, but I think it looks cool and rustic.

Everything's so shiny that it's hard to get a decent picture of the finished flasks themselves.

For the next one, I arranged his name in stickers, painted over them, waited a day for the paint to dry, then removed the stickers.  It was harder to see the difference between the original steel and the etched steel since there was a smaller surface area and it was hard to compare with the bright red polish between the two, so I went ham.  I did a lot more tracing motions this time around, and ended up with a pretty cool looking etch.

Some things I learned:  Definitely do this in a well ventilated area.  I started in my bathroom with the fan on, but my dorm bathroom is tiny as can be, so I moved over to the stove I don't use because my burners don't work, and used that hood as a sort of a fume hood.  The reaction does produce toxic chlorine gas, but not enough to do serious damage unless you hover over it and purposefully inhale as much as you can.  Also, it smells kind of bad.  The cotton will start to discolor as a result of the reaction, but it doesn't have an effect as far as I can tell.  The only result of using the discolored cotton is that the salt solution will start to turn that burnt brown color on the steel, but it is easily wiped up with a paper towel.  Definitely let the vinegar solution sit overnight.  I used the same solution for the three days I was working on this, and it seemed to get stronger with each day.

Before the etching

After the etching

Honestly, I think the hardest part of doing this is making sure the stickers are aligned properly before you try to paint over them.  This is a technique that definitely works better for shorter quotes, as longer ones will probably tend to get tedious.  I will say that I am looking forward to the one I'm going to make as a 21st birthday present to myself.

Note: I was so excited to give these to him that I forgot to take a picture of the finished ones together, so as soon as I get one from the man himself, I'll post it here.

Winter Break Crafting

Probably my favorite thing about college is that the summer and winter breaks really are breaks.  There aren't any assignments given, there's no extra reading that I have to do, and I finally get to sit back and do things that I want to do.  And, since it's me, I made things.

When I was little, my mother made little wooden tiles that helped us young'ns to learn to read.  She made tiles with different words, settings, and actions on them.  What made them special though, was how she also made tiles with a lot of family members' faces on them.  A few years ago, I noticed that with my cousins now having children of their own, the size of the family had almost doubled.  The younger bunch had found the old tiles and had a grand old time making their older cousins do silly things.  I found a bag of the leftover tiles, and made another batch, adding in those who had been born since the first set was made.  I consider myself very lucky to have such a large and ever-growing family, so this Christmas, I decided it was time for yet another batch of tiles.

Using one of the originals as a size reference for the heads

I added a lot of different settings and verbs in the last group, so this time, I mainly focused on making tiles for all the new babies that had been born since then.  I decided to go for a New Orleans theme this time around.

The finished tiles

I'm really proud of my crawfish.

In the background, you can see Christmas presents in the works for the rest of the family.  I decorated glass ornaments with oil based felt pens.  The red one is a Sharpie brand, but I used another brand for the other colors since a pack of those is about the same cost as one Sharpie.

Six out of 25 that I made.

The reason I had those oil based paint pens in the first place is, you guessed it, to make Sharpie mugs.  My mother is the type of person that no one ever knows what to get for her.  She really doesn't ask for much more than a nice quiet afternoon nap, Netflix, and a large glass of iced tea.  I couldn't think of anything to get for her for Christmas.  Luckily for me, she cleaned out our pantry and found a large pack of assorted hot chocolate mixes.  She started drinking those every night, which gave me the idea for the mugs.

Dollar Store mugs.

I'm not going to go into detail as to how I made these, since they're all over the internet right now.

 The one with the fleur-de-lis was mainly a test one so that I could get the feel of the markers on the ceramics, but she uses that one the most.

When I was at Michaels to get the oil based paint pens, I noticed a pack of canvases for a very good price.  Being as weak as I am, I bought a pack.  My boyfriend had mentioned something about wanting more art for his wall, so I thought about making a series of canvases that resembled the surface of the planets.  The pack only had 5 canvases, so I decided to do galaxies instead.

Sketching the nebula

I based it off of this nebula.

Almost finished

In retrospect, acrylics would probably have been a better choice than watercolors, but hey, I like how it turned out.  I used an iridescent color in the center which doesn't show up too well on camera, but it looks much better in person.  I still need to put the other stars in the background.

And that's about it.  In the meantime, I have a show to direct.

Making Letter Shirts

Today, I made letter shirts for my boyfriend.  His got eaten by the washing machine, so he enlisted my help in making a new one.  After a trip to Joann's where he carefully picked out the fabrics and Tshirts he wanted, he turned them over to my superior sewing skills.

Picking which fabric he wanted the letters to be

"The organic should be in the middle, framed by the geometric ones for balance." -Casey

I should probably mention now that I am not a member of Greek life.  I never have been, and I probably will never be a sorority girl.  Therefore, I have never done this before, so I just kind of winged it.  This tutorial was super helpful and was the one I followed.  We got the letters themselves from here, and since I am computer illiterate, Casey fixed them and printed them the size he wanted.  We tried making a letter sweatshirt, but that didn't end well.  It was so bulky, and I didn't have heat 'n bond and my sewing machine hated me that day, so that's sitting unfinished on a shelf somewhere in his closet.

Dorm life yo.  Check out my sweet setup.  I have all the essentials.  Sewing machine, cell phone, note cards, molecular model kit, shelf/printer, and motivational poster.

Thanks for the motivation, Ryan Lochte

I'm not going to go into much detail on how I made them, since there are other people who can do it much better than I can (see link above).  I will talk about how I knotted the fabric, though.  My sewing machine doesn't take exactly the same path in reverse as it does forward, so backstitching would have just given a messy finish.  To fix this, I took a hand needle, threaded the thread tail from the beginning and end of the stitching, and pulled in through to the inside of the shirt.  From there, I triple knotted it together to the tail ends from the underside.

I know yellow on yellow is hard to see, but I hope you get the gist. 

Regarding the Heat 'n Bond, I got the kind in the red package with the paper backing.  On my second trip to Joann's (the first being the trip to get the fabric), I got the kind in the purple package because it was supposedly more "sewable."  I hadn't worked with Heat 'n Bond before, so I was a very disappointed when I got home and it was nothing more than fusible interfacing that I already had 10 yards of for bow ties (but that's another post).  I tried to use that for the hoodie, but was more trouble than it was worth, so I went back for the fusible "no-sew" one.  My sewing machine had no problem going through it even though it said "DO NOT SEW."  It was EXPONENTIALLY easier than the first type.

From start to finish, each shirt took about an hour and twenty minutes to make.  The hardest part was probably setting my machine to a zig-zag pattern that Casey wanted.  Once that was done, it was simply aligning the machine to sew where I wanted to. 

The finished product.  He's a PiLam by golly.

I still have to iron on his nickname on the back, but that's easy.

Close up on stitching detail.  That's what bloggers do, right?  Check out that detail.  Hot damn. *wolf whistles*

For future reference, yellow letters on a purple shirt could probably do with a thin layer of interfacing or something so they don't get washed out by the darker background.

Anyway, sometimes I do things, and this was the thing I did today.