This looks odd. For one thing, it's not a craft that photographs well. For another thing, well, it's not that great to start out with. But this is a dream of mine and this is my first crack at that dream and I'm pretty excited about it. So what you are looking at is a wine bottle that has been sawed in half and has two little holes drilled in it to thread wire through, then filled with little rocks, sand, and a pot with seeds in it. I'm going to hang the whole contraption in front of my window so that the little seeds will grow and plants will live in an old wine bottle. I'm going to make a series of these and hang them in my window. It's going to be some kind of recycled hanging gardens. Yeah, that sounds about right. Who wouldn't want a hanging wine bottle garden? Right now I've only got a small cache of empties to saw through. But I've got a bunch of full bottles. From now on, my place is always on tap! And I'm going to start bugging you about not throwing away your empties so I can get better at this glass cutting business. Do you see the roughness of those edges? It's pretty rudimentary. Let's not even mention the pair of cracks in the glass near the wire holes. Yikes. Hope the whole thing doesn't bust. Fingers crossed.
More details -- this is my first Drimmel project. My Nana gave me the Drimmel for Christmas. And it took me a while to locate the perfect bit -- I needed a round diamond tip. I visited a few hardware stores before the man at Elliots had just what I needed (which, of course, reminds me that I shouldn't ever try to find hardware somewhere before I have hit up Elliots). However, using a rotating diamond wheel on a piece of glass kinda terrified me. I had to pull out the old safety goggles from chemistry class (sometimes its good to be a partial packrat) and wear some dish gloves before I'd try this out. I practically had 911 on speed dial before I first placed the whirling, buzzing, Drimmel bit against the wine bottle. I was sure it would split into sharp splinters, flying at high speeds at my face, neck, arms, hands, priceless porcelain figurines, antique dishware, you name it (Ok, those last two don't exist, but still, a flying shard of glass is a pain where ever it goes). Of course, nothing of the sort took place. It did create a very grating sound -- like a million pieces of chalk squeaking on a chalk board -- and a cloud of fine powder filled the air. Holding the Drimmel steady is kinda tough and that's why the lines on my first try weren't very good. That plus I was too scared of getting hurt to do a good job. I think most of my fears were unfounded but I'm going to keep up the caution around the Drimmel. It's a little more risky than say, paper and glue (the subject of tomorrow's post). Anyways, I'm going to find that happy medium -- the Taoist wu wei -- between caution and precision, chaos and order for my next cut bottles. It shouldn't take me too many cases of Riesling to get one that is chiseled properly.
And finally, about the letter "e". There's no relevance. It can stand for anything under the sun -- eggplants, Ethiopia, energy... I bought a bunch of letters at Curiosities (on Abrams) and I thought it would be neat to attach one letter to each wine bottle/plant. Perhaps I'll spell out something when I'm all said and done. Starting with "e" is a good idea, since it's in like, every word.
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