I’m finally getting around to posting this, although it’s been done for a week now.  I took the last of the Red Stripe bottles we had and turned them into a 4-pack set and put them up for sale.  

I’ve found that I really enjoy doing this sort of thing.  It’s relaxing; I like being able to sit outside with my headphones on and do some repetitive work with my hands.  Sanding, sanding, some grinding, a bit more sanding.  I don’t need to really pay much attention to what I’m doing once I’ve gotten the basic grinding done and there’s no risk of slicing a finger off.  I think that this might be my official summer craft and while I’d like to continue doing it throughout the year, I’ve got no place to do it during the colder parts of the year.

Sadly, I seem to have burnt out my fake-Dremel’s motor.  Once I sell this set, I’ll be buying myself a new Dremel, a real one.  Until then, I won’t be doing much.

I’ve got a huge pile of bottles that have been cut, but haven’t been touched otherwise.  They range from Starbucks, Arizona Iced Teas, Lipton Iced Teas, generic beer bottles, and a couple of champagne bottles that I managed to snag from a baby shower I went to over the weekend.  I may take those bottles and use my lack of a grinder to experiment with flame polishing.  I don’t want to try it out on some of the fancier bottles I’ve been cutting.  It’s expensive enough to spend $8 on a single bottle of beer (such as the Arrogant Bastard and Ruination, and the other four bottles that I’ve yet to finish and photograph), only to shatter the glass trying to polish it.

I’m also still looking for a way to seal labels onto the bottles.  There’s a lot of bottles out there with great, creative labels, and I hate scraping them off.