Swarovski Champagne Glass

This is a very fancy set of champagne glasses, made by me.

I did unfortunately not take too many pictures while making this, but i will try to explain as good as possible. 

The reason i made this set of toasting flutes (as i believe they are called), is because when my girlfriend and i were in Austria once, we were in a Swarovski store, and she saw the glasses in the second picture. She absolutely fell in love with them, but the pricetag was very heavy, so neither of us could afford them. That's when i thought "Well, then i could make some"

And so i did. 

My initial approach was to try and melt glass together, but it failed pretty bad so i had to make it another way. 

I decided to try and 3D print the "cups" that would hold the stem to the base and the drinking part. To print it, i had to draw the whole thing in SolidWorks, and since i had access to a printer at school, i did a lot of trial and error. When i finally had a set of decent cups, i wanted to paint it, so it would look like metal. I went through a ton of different kinds of paint, but had to give up, because the best i could get was something like cast aluminium, not shiny like i wanted. Damn..

I needed a new way, and my choice fell on turning a set of cups. I don't have a lathe, so i had a friend make them for me in stainless steel, but unfortunately he read my drawings wrong and made the hole 8mm instead of the 6mm diameter my glass tubes are, and that was the last of his stainless steel stock. More thinking... 
I ended up buying an 8mm diameter 1mm wall aluminium rod, that i could use as a sleeve inside the steel cup, that would be able to hold the stem straight.

That was the basic process, and now for the detailed version:

For this project i went through a load of different materials, but many of them were discarded later on, so this is the list as short as possible. 

Materials
Toasting flutes with a stem as thin as possible
Glass tubes, mine are 6mm with a 1mm wall thickness
Turned cups for holding the tubes
Loose Swaovski stones, mine were 1.2mm diameter (these were very hard to find without foil on the back, i actually ended up buying some in a Swarovski store sold as "Stardust")

Optionally i made a box to hold a bottle of champagne and the two glasses, but more on that in a later step

Tools
Dremel with cutting discs
Rotary sander
Sanding paper 600 grit 
Other common tools as files and a hot glue gun
Chemical metal, two component extremely hard epoxy glue

First thing to do is to break some glass. Strategically. 

Take your cutting disc, and cut the stem over on the middle of the stems. The reason you cut it on the middle, is to make more room for the disc later. When you cut, make sure to not put to much pressure on the glass, just cut a tiny bit in, and constantly turn it around, cutting all the way around the stem as even as possible. If you cut it evenly, the stem will snap along the cut, after cutting about half a millimeter in.  

When it is cut in the middle, you can go ahead and shorten the stems as much as possible. I did it by cutting the same way as before, but it can be tricky if the stem gets bigger when it is fused to the base and "top". Cut it as small as possible, and then sand the rest away on the rotary sander. It is dangerous, and very unhealthy to breathe glass dust, so make sure to wear proper protection, and preferably do it outside. 

The smaller you can get the stem leftovers, the easier it will get to fit the steel cups on to the glass. 

I had to cut my glass tubes down to 80 mm, instead of the 100 i got them. That was done exactly the same way.

I can unfortunately not tell you how these were made, since i had them made by a friend. 

The important thing is to make sure the cavity that sits out toward the base and top is deep enough to sit over the stem leftovers, and of course that the glass tube fits in the hole.
I had them made in stainless steel, since there is a good chance they will be exposed to water and other fluids over time. 
I got 4 identical, but as mentioned the hole was to big, so i had to put in an aluminium sleeve inside. The aluminium tube was chamfered to approximately fit the angle of the steel cup. This was done by simply filing and sanding it down. 

I decided to fill the tubes with the Swarovski stones before gluing anything else together, to make sure i wouldn't end up not being able to fill them. 

It was rather simple really, i made a plug in one end with a hot glue gun, just a few millimeters. When dry, i poured the stones in, and sealed it in the other end the same way. Be careful not to squirt the glue down the tube, it would not look very nice. You need the plug to be so small that it can be hidden in the steel cup. 

The order of witch i assembled this was rather tricky. I am not certain it was the best way to do it, but it got the job done. 

First i glued the stem in one of the cups, with chemical metal. It is some nasty stuff, so be careful, proper protection, ventilation, you know the drill ;) 

With those set, i glued the cup with the stem in it to the base, and used my super average human eyesight to make sure they were straight. It is difficult, and one got a little bit crooked, so not perfect either, but it was the best i could come up with. Again, chemical metal. 

Then i set the last cup, and while doing so, i loosely sat the glass on top, to make sure they were at an even height, give or take .5-1mm.

Last part was to glue the glass on the upper cup. I initially drew a line around the glass, parallel to the top edge, and filled the glass with water, up to that line, thinking i could use it to adjust the glass straight. It didn't really work, and so i did it by eyesight also. 

When everything is set, clean off the glasses, and they are ready for some stylish toasts.