More Adventures with Silhouette Sandblasting

I'm still playing with designs and sandblasting. I mentioned in the last post that I was doing a couple of bottles with designs in them. So here are pictures of the two that I did. I will be doing more for sure! I really need to get my hands on more cobalt bottles, I love the way the blast shows up against the background!

I've mentioned the wedding plates. I had three wedding plates to do, and I had a couple of projects I needed to do that required a french vanilla glass. This glass is fun to play with and gives a great chemical reaction with some other glasses. I have limited funds due to losing about 6 weeks of work due to a broken arm (just below the elbow) so I think, no problem! I'll just get a sheet of french vanilla and do the wedding plates out of that. One problem I should have foreseen but didn't; the sandblast of the names and wedding dates didn't show up very well. It would have been useful had I decided this before I took the mask off, paint them to highlight and no problem, right? But of course, I'm always running faster than my brain can think, and I'd already removed the mask so I needed to figure out how to fix this. The first plate I used a low fire paint, but because of the technique used on the plate, the plate face is a bit rough, so it wasn't just a matter of putting the paint on and then wiping it off on the "smooth" areas, leaving it in the sand blasted areas. I did my best to clean up the outside areas, but I felt it came out very uneven. (No picture).

For the second wedding plate, I didn't have a chance to paint it before I left to sell at a farmer's market, and when I got home, I was too tired to try and do that kind of small hand work. I needed to deliver the plate the next day. I wondered if Pebeo paints would work. I checked my stash. I had the perfect color, but it was so old it wasn't good. I thought, ok, I could run to the store in the morning, paint it, and it would only need to be baked in the oven for 30 minutes and I could make the time schedule. I run to a local store only to find out they no longer carry the regular Pebeo paints, only those with special effects like mottling. Oi. (Notice how this only happens when you are facing a deadline?) With the help of a sales clerk I found a Martha Stewart paint that doesn't require firing, the paint cures on it's own in 21 days, even to the point of being dishwasher safe on the top rack. I also picked up some Rub N Buff for future experimentation.  So, I am happier with the results, and I have one more to do, but I will try one more experiment plate that I will hopefully remember to paint before I take the resist off. I plan on incorporating more of this in my work!