I’ve been sandblasting glass with Latvian designs for years, but THIS year things got HIGH TECH.

Here’s how sandblasting got high tech on me:  I’ve been learning how to use Inkscape to create vector drawings. Then I take these files to the vinyl cutter at Sector67 which cuts them out for me.  After transferring the cut vinyl to clean glass, I wrap the rest of the glass to protect it from getting sandblasted anywhere but in the cut design and head over to the sandblaster.  Sandblasting at sector has taken a little finessing to get it work well with this thinner vinyl BUT with the help of a couple sector folks and a regulator, I can tone down the PSI to a level that doesn’t destroy the vinyl or the glass. Then comes a LOT of clean-clean-cleaning and you’re left with these:

In the old way of doing this all by hand, I would spend most of my time drawing and cutting designs out with an exacto knife.  This more high tech method ends up having me spend far more time cleaning up the glass after sandblasting than before, but I think that on the whole this method ends up being faster (especially if you ignore the initial learning curve for learning new (complicated) software and machinery).