First and foremost, I’d like to thank @Laen for posting this: Etching Tile
I’m not always on the forum so occasionally something will be posted and I miss it the first time around. Luckily the forum works in mysterious way and internetcraft making posts reappear when someone has commented on them recently. With that said, I was put into a frenzy and needed to go out and buy some of this tile. I also got mine from Lowe’s, and because a few people had said they were made to buy a box of 100, I went into the store with the mentality that I would also buy a box of that amount. So we found where they kept their tile, and I was worried that I wasn’t going to find the cheap/good stuff because everything I was originally looking at was closer to $.60 and up. We found the goods at $.18 (Hawaii premiums adding in a couple of cents per piece), but there were only 16 left! See, I was already worked up into buying a box, so my wife went and found an employee to help us a look. His inventory log said they should have a couple hundred laying around, but we never found them. Another store had several thousand, but we weren’t wanting to drive another 40 minutes out of our way.
This turned out to be alright, because I ended up grabbing the ones they did have, as well as these ones:
https://www.lowes.com/pd/American-Olean-Starting-Line-Gloss-White-Ceramic-Subway-Tile-Common-3-in-x-6-in-Actual-3-in-x-6-in/3083627
I. Love. Them. The mentality was that with the 3"x6" we would be able to do names/words/ etc. as well as pictures, and I wasn’t getting the same vibe from the 4"x4". We got home, and I couldn’t help myself; I had to start lasering this tile! These are the results
My wife’s birthday was yesterday so I made the pineapple for her, but she was jealous of me “doing all the work” and insisted that she let me let her choose an image to engrave. She’s kind of a funny cat person and fell in love with the cat design immediately. The one on the far left is artwork by an instagram artist, and the fingerprint is my logo.
The stands are from @Janerlea but the smaller version posted by @markwal within this thread:
I added my signature to the legs of the stands so I didn’t have to figure out a way to etch the back of the tile.
Thanks to the people that experiment and share their wonderful ideas with the rest of us. These have been exciting to make, and make me enthusiastic about what else can be put into the forge!
EDIT: I’d like to add that I originally used masking but this leaves virtually no residue so I opted to just etch on the tiles directly. Used sharpies to color them in, and have not sealed with anything. Regular paper towels with some Windex goes a long way when cleaning the over markings. I may add a photo of the before to show the process but I’ll have to do so when I go home tonight.
When you buy a box of 100 tile you can really feel free to play around and experiment. It’s nothing like PG which I consider every inch to be valuable (though I do waste a lot of that as well…haha)