I Made Beach Glass!

Last Sunday I finally got around to my project of making beach glass in my rock tumbler. I first thought about it a month or two ago and then thought it was maybe a crazy idea but I checked the internet and sure enough, people had done it. It's nice to know my crazy ideas have already been thought of. Then I don't feel as crazy. Except on the internet, the people just put sand in the water. But I'm thinking, "Yeah, the ocean's all sand and water, but there's also quite a bit of salt." So I also added salt. I don't have sea salt, I have kosher salt, so I guess I made Jewish beach glass.

~

I gathered my stuff which was a bright blue bottle, a green bottle and a clear bottle, safety goggles, a box, gloves, a hammer and an old t-shirt:

If you think about all the times you've broken glass, you probably think it's pretty easy to break glass. But it is not easy if you want to do it on purpose. I put the bottles inside the t-shirt and put on my safety goggles. Raised the hammer and PING!! That's all that happened. A giant loud ping. And it was really loud. I thought about getting my earplugs, but I was a little impatient and did it again and, again, just a really loud ping. Now I was getting irritated and looked around and saw my little stack of bricks. So I picked up a brick and dropped it and it only broke the little clear bottle. The two wine bottles were being really stubborn. So now I was irritated and thought that would give me the impetus I needed and dropped that brick again and nothing. It was time to call in the big guns. My Sweetie was out there with me doing yardwork, so I asked for his help. It only took him two brick hits and then I had this:

With my gloves on, I picked out the best pieces and put them in my rock tumbler barrel:

I added water to cover the pieces and then poured in some sand:

Next, I added my kosher salt:

I got it started around 4:00 that afternoon and late this Saturday night, I thought I'd check the progress and they were done:

They were nice and frosty and smooth:

Now I want to go to the liquor store and get some red, aqua, and other colored bottles. I don't know if I want to make something with them or just use them in vases when I have fresh flowers, but I really like the ones I have so far. For now I just put some in a goblet:

We had a really nice weekend. Saturday we got lots of yardwork done. I made my backyard nice again. It was really bad (right, Carole?) Our patio was so bad with leaves and oak tree seed pods I actually had to rake it first! And every piece of furniture had a fine yellow pollen coat on it. And there was extraneous furniture that needed to go away. It was a lot of work, but it was nice when my daughter came by Saturday evening and we could sit on the patio. It was in the 80's all day and I felt like I burnt a million calories. Today (Sunday) was My Sweetie's birthday and we went to his mom's house. It was also to celebrate my birthday so she made me collard greens and they were so delicious I had three servings AND brought some home. Oh and a cold front came in Saturday night and the sky was SO BLUE on Sunday I had to take a picture:

And the picture doesn't even do it justice. It was CRAZY blue. And one last thing: tonight on HGTV a realtor used the word "functionable." That is still making me laugh. hee hee hee. Anyway I hope you all had a great and functionable weekend!