This is just a small one. But I thought it might still be worth writing about it. Every now and then it makes sense to mark something to reduce the probability that it gets lost or taken by somebody else by accident. I had this with the water bottle I use to take to the bouldering gym. Lots of people have a similar one and I had one disappear on me already so I thought about making mine a bit unique.

There are of course lots of different ways to do that. You could put a couple of stickers on it. Or paint it or attache some stuff to it. I went with scratching a simple design into it.

The Bottles

The idea is quite simple. A clear plastic bottle scratches easily and if you scratch a pattern into it you can draw something. So I made a template and fixed it on a bottle with some tape. Then I broke out my proxxon and started scratching out the design.

It worked well enough so I took the bottle I actually wanted to decorate and repeated the process. Before scratching in the whole design I used a knife to mark the edges to have them a bit more clearly defined.

I figure it looks decent enough. It’s not perfect but is a nice and unobtrusive way to mark something. The better way to do it is with a sand blaster. Than it is much more even and a lot cleaner. But I don’t have access to one and don’t own one either.