I wanted to do a 3D scene using everyday objects as my inspiration...

The mate cup & bombilla were modeled in LightWave, then imported into Maya for scene set-up and shading. The gourd texture was painted in Painter, and the silver shader was created using procedurals and ramps. The cloth texture was a hi-res scan of some material I have from South America and applied to a sculpted nurbs surface. The scene was rendered in mental ray, and imported into After Effects where Trapcode's Starglow filter was applied to add a soft glow to the metal. The final render from AE was then brought into Photoshop for a DOF composite effect.