We love summer. But we know winter has a place in the grand scheme of things. Nature needs a chance to take a breath and recover a little. So do we. We use winter to prepare for summer. Seriously, we spend all winter getting ready for summer. For 6 summers now we’ve been running a lodge in Northern Minnesota. People all the time ask us what we do when we aren’t running a lodge. Most people don’t understand how much work it takes to prepare for a full summer at a lodge in Northern Minnesota. Today we are going to share with you an example of something we do to prepare for the summer.
This fall we decided to replace the glassware in all the cabins. So we went and bought new pint glasses for all the cabins. And we decided we wanted to etch a design in the glasses. Some may find this silly, but we enjoy this sort of thing. And fortunately for us, Kasey’s dad has a sand blaster.
First Kasey works on a design. Then she prints out a negative. We use that negative to burn a positive on a special film by exposing it to ultra violet light.
Then we secure the film on the glass and mask around the film to protect the glass.
This is what it looks like before we begin to etch it.
Then we put it in the sand blaster and carefully use the hose to shoot tiny grains of sand at the film so that it blasts away the places where the UV light has weakened the film.
After it has been sand blasted we remove the film and masking and clean the glass. The finished product looks something like this. What do you think? Hopefully you notice the new pint glasses in our cabin rentals this year and enjoy your favorite beverage a little more!
