Though a lot of work is put into customising PC cases, keyboards, and even GPUs, the humble side panel is surprisingly overlooked, given the real estate. I suppose this makes some sense, as glass is designed to be looked through, but a gorgeous stained glass-style makeover has convinced me we need more tempered glass customisation. User Nososochek took to the PCBuild subreddit recently to show off a deer illustration that they’ve been creating for two entire months. “This process took me six to eight hours a day for two months,” they explain, “as it required a lot of effort, focus, and patience … The slightest mistake, that wasn’t corrected within the next five minutes, could lead to further serious problems with the correction.”The principle is that they were looking for a creative project, and stained glass being “aesthetically ornate” with “a lot of details”, provided them a creative challenge. “I wanted to choose a nature theme and considered many different animals, but a composition with a deer or a bird looked the best,” they tell me. “That’s why I chose such a magnificent and luxurious animal.”I’m also told the process requires special stained glass paints and the purchase of custom glass to replace the tinted glass traditionally used in their PC case. The outline of the custom design is a specific mould for stained glass, which is placed on top of the tempered glass.
The back of the glass panelNososochek on RedditNososochek on Reddit
Over time, Nososocheck manually coats each section, making sure it will actually stain the tempered glass, as opposed to just creating a coat over the top. They tell me the special acrylic used to stain glass hardens over time, which makes the process both time-consuming and delicate. Think of the process as somewhere between the traditional stained glass method of individually fitting glass by soldering, and a paint-by-numbers project, in terms of difficulty and intricacy.
Nososochek on Reddit
Nososocheck notes they’ve actually had this beautiful glass panel in their rig for over a year now, but it just never picked up any traction online until it was posted on Reddit.”In fact, this work has been around for about a year, and I really wanted to share it with people,” they tell me, “but other platforms ignored my posts about this deer. A few days ago, my husband suggested that I post it on Reddit, where there are a lot of people.”I posted it with the idea that it would be great if at least 1,000 people noticed it, but I didn’t expect such a high number of views, and I’m absolutely shocked! It’s incredibly amazing that this happened.”You’ve just got to make sure not to drop that tempered glass on a hard, smooth surface. I couldn’t bear to watch that lovely bit of art smash, even if all the little shards would look pretty scattered on the floor.
