[Glass Etching] TNT "out of your league"

I met a girl at a party which I liked, and left her a contact card. When she contacted me, I invited her to a restaurant, and she came with a tee shirt with a big writing "OUT OF YOUR LEAGUE".  Yesterday she suggested to meet again, and I got inspired: I want to draw a TNT with a tee shirt "OUT OF YOUR LEAGUE". Which I did, and etched, this morning: here is the result.

Since I was doing the whole project in one run (I usually work on a project in a few days, half an hour at a time), I took regularly pictures and timed the whole execution (2h and 20 mns) from the first touch of the pencil on the paper to when I ordered my tools (redaction of this blog post not included). The idea is that people who want to learn how to glass etch can refer to this post (among others) to get an idea of the process.

First I chose the support (a flat glass plate) and penciled on paper the size of the drawing area on the plate, and within this area the character that I want to draw:

When I am happy with the design (as Franquin said, one uses the eraser even more than the pencil), I marked in a stronger way the final design:

So that when I ink it (you can't erase any more after that!), I do have the design that I want:

I then flip the drawing, put it on my home made "light table", put the plate on top (four well placed erasers maintain the drawing close to the surface of the glass), and start copying the design. In other occasions I copied the face version of the drawing on the face of the glass, and then copy it to the back by transparency, but this process is faster and minimize the amount of transformation (and is quite easy with the light table):

You can see the result after copying: the two are quite similar!

Then I etch the glass plate with a dremmel and a diamond head, and wash the ink:

After some hesitation, I colored the hair, and the letters (with a distinct diamond head, as this using more of the diamond powder on the head):

I like the final result!

It took me in total 2h and 20mns, but I have a lot of experience drawing TNT and I had already the idea, so the design process was fast. When I copy an existing drawing it can come down to 1h, and when I have to design and the inspiration does not come, it can take days or weeks or months... 

And the girl? The reason she wanted to see me was because she felt it  was important to tell me that she had fallen in love "from one day to the other" with a "Peruvian guy living in the south". Blah.