They make precision dental sand blasters that are ideal for doing glassware, etc. A Google Search brings up a lot of them. Most are small enclosures for lab work and run about $400, but there are also some of these blasters that come without the cabinets. The Raysist sheets are contact exposed with UV light and then washed off, leaving the image that you want. Stick it to a piece of glassware, shield the rest of it from the abrasive, and blast away. The micro fine sand leaves a nice frosted effect.
I almost got into custom carving and engraving 20+ years ago. I bought the modified dentist drill air powered carver (turns 400,000 rpm and uses 1/16" shank bits). I made a few carved/engraved wooden projects with it, but I never bought the micro fine sand blaster unit I had been giving serious thought to engraving VIN numbers in the bottom corners of car windows and such to differ theft. I also had planned on engraving decorative displays such as can now be seen in divider panels of restaurants, etc. where the image is just frosted into the glass. This was a fresh new field for this at the time.
There is a good demand for this, even now, but I got into photo retouching using Adobe Photoshop and other photo enhancing software instead. Don't believe anything that you see in photos, because I can make it in the photo when it never existed that way in real life. None of the women models in advertising photos are as perfect as they look, because I was one of the ones who removed their moles, scars, and wrinkles to make them look younger and perfect.
I had a woman of about 50 bring me a portrait photo of herself, asking if I could make her look much younger. After a bit of discussion about how much younger, she said "do your best". I managed to take about 25 years off of her (a fine looking woman at either age). She came back a week later and when I showed he what I had done, she said "that's perfect. I want two copies, one for me and one to send to my high school reunion, and I'm not going. Let them eat their hearts out". We both had a good laugh over it, and I'm certain that it caused quite a stir at the class reunion.
Charley
