#4: The Arms of the Barony of White Waters

So, since I've decided to combine my long-term goal of doing the Baronial arms of all 19 Midrealm baronies, and competing in A&S 50, I need to get a move on. This weekend is Swine and Roses, hosted by the Barony of the White Waters. Rather than do the devices in order of precedence, I've always planned on doing them in order of proximity to me. Having the closest ties to White Waters, and the first "deadline", they are first up.

Azure, a mullet of four points within a laurel wreath Or, a chief wavy argent.
 
Cutting the mask was a major pain in the fingers. I cut the escutcheon from blue-flashed-on-clear, and applied three stripes of Gorilla duct tape. A very thin coating of wood glue, and then my paper copy of the baronial arms. After it dried, I attacked it with an X-acto knife. Peeling the pieces out was a challenge, and today I ordered a set of steel dental picks.

Four pictures taken while removing the mask:

The acid etching began last night [8/13/13]. The panel needs to be completed for submission at S&R on the 17th.

[Edit 8/19/13]

The acid etching wasn't going quite fast enough. I realized the panel would probably be done Sunday, but I needed it Friday evening to stain. Mistress Kirsten shared with me a copy of her documentation a few years ago, and while I don't have her sources, yet, I know from her that abrasion is a period way to remove flashed glass. I've manually removed flashed glass with an "engraving point" for my dremel, and it's a very slow process. It's not well-suited for the space I needed to clear and the time I had. I did this with my dremel on a low speed:

It's very pretty, and the glass was left with a nice texture. I started to silver stain it, and had a problem. Due to the detail level it became very hard to remove excess stain after I blended it. It would probably have been much easier if I had waited until the stain dried and could have scratched it out. I was working with Q-tips, paper tower etc. and found it almost impossible. I removed too much frequently, trying to clean up the stem:

It was 3 AM and I needed sleep, so I gave up on the idea of entering it at Swine and Roses. On my drive there the idea occurred to me to fire it in three stages. Once for the mullet (4-pointed star) and the stem of the laurel wreath, once for half of the leaves, and once for the other half of the leaves. This would let me have plenty of wiggle room to clean up and detail the stain after blending. I'm not sure whether the results would be better when compared to waiting for it to dry and scraping it with a stick. That may require some experimentation.

[Edit 6/12/14]
Yow! I never updated this post. Here is the roundel >.<