The New Hotness

The improved Holly Mirror Coaster looks pretty good:

Until you realize some of those specks aren’t surface dust and take a closer look:

The surface scratches are doubled by their reflection in the bottom mirror. The little dots that aren’t doubled reveal marks in the mirror surface itself.

An even closer look:

As nearly as I can tell, those are random speckles caused by the laser tube firing when it shouldn’t, due to the chaotic nature of the gas discharge going on inside.

In this case, they cause defects in the mirror coating allowing alcohol from the fat-tip permanent markers coloring the engraved areas to hit the acrylic. The starbursts come from stress cracks around the punctures.

Peering even closer shows similar cracks along the edges of the colored areas:

Not much to do about the random speckles, but it’s obvious I must up my coloring game.

Which would be significantly easier if rattlecan spray paint sprayed at winter temperatures …