Beachwalker Boxes: Unique Handmade Wood and Glass Boxes located in Austin, Texas
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Cast Glass Shell Box. Also: Medusa and Koi

7/27/2014

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We are proud of ourselves- this cast glass box is really beautiful! The blue glass box and top both have a watery, dripping effect, and the pink cast glass shell on top turned out perfect. Tom is making a walnut base with wavy, curvy legs for it, and it's gorgeous. We're almost ready to start casting in lead crystal.

Below, a Medusa box. Medusa and snakes are woodburned and painted. The sides are yellowheart. The inside is lined with red suede, and it will be hinged. Next to it, a new etched, goldleafed, and painted glass for a box top- two koi. They were etched into the glass, then goldleafed in spots, then painted with enamel paint in the etch. This will get a watery colored painted base.

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Cast Glass Nudie Pic! Also: Ravens, Frog, Wolf

7/14/2014

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More new cast glass: a beautiful aqua glass with a nude figure on top. She looked mermaidish to me, so I gave the box a wavy, watery design. As you can see at the bottom of the lid, these need some finish work, but they turned out lovely.

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And here's a box in wax: roses and leaves all the way around the box. It took forever to make and attach all those little wax roses and leaves. This will be covered in plaster, then the wax will be steamed out so that there will be a negative mold of the whole wax piece in plaster. Then I'll fill it with glass and fire it. If even one of the petals doesn't fill with glass, or breaks in firing, the piece will be ruined. Glass is a harsh and unforgiving mistress.
I'm still trying to decide what will go on the top. More roses would be overkill.
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To the left, a new glass-topped box made of wenge with bloodwood detail. The ravens were etched into the glass and then stained black. The base is leafed with 22K gold and copper in a sunset pattern, then epoxied to get a reflective effect from the ravens on top. Below, a new tall leggy box made of a gorgeous live-edged mesquite with sapele legs and a stone frog on top. And we're making another frog box- in glass- because we love frogs so much. Finally, below, a new Little Red Riding Hood Box, with Little Red in the winter woods woodburned and painted on top, and a wolf inside (both top and base are maple). The sides are padauk.

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Cast Glass Boxes! Plus: Zigzag Legs, Rapunzel, Hummingbird

7/3/2014

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Here is one of our first kiln-cast glass boxes! It's solid cast glass using the lost wax method. The lid has a glass shell cast into it in different glass. It does need some grinding and polishing to make it smoother. This will get a wooden base and legs, probably something like the legs on the zigzag box shown below, only curvier. More are coming as we experiment with different methods in the kiln. These take forever and a day to make: making a wax box and lid, pouring plaster mold material around them, melting the wax out of the plaster mold, prefiring the molds, then loading them with glass and firing them for 3 full days! Then the glass  needs cold working to remove the extra glass at the base and clean up any blips- the uneven look at the bottom  is due to extra glass that needs to be ground off.

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We started making this box as a prototype for a cast-glass box, but it looked so great in design that we used beautiful woods (bocote for the sides and yellowheart for the legs, base, and top), and it turned out gorgeous. It has brass detail on the legs, and a bronze bird skull lid lift. Below, a new story box: Rapunzel woodburned on maple, with 22K goldleafed hair, leaning out her window. On the inside is a woodburned and silverleafed pair of scissors. The sides are yellowheart. Below, a new etched and painted glass-topped hummingbird box: walnut with a woodburned and painted maple base. It's hinged.

And why can't our parrot say "Peekaboo"? ALL the YouTube birds say peekaboo. It ain't fair.



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    Author

    Tom Beach and Amanda Walker

    Tom works full time building boxes and entertaining and feeding pets.

    Amanda does the glass casting and etching and is generally busy having a midlife crisis

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