Halloween Shadow Tealight

The shadow is the product.

A silhouette panel slots into a base plate, a tea light sits in front of it, and the wall behind does the rest — a hand-sized cut of plywood throws a shadow a metre and a half tall. The preview in this generator is not a flat drawing of the parts; it simulates the actual point-light projection, so you can see what you are about to cut before you cut it.

What you control

• 24 silhouettes — jack-o'-lanterns (classic, fierce, cute), ghost, black cat, bat, skull, tombstone, haunted house, bare tree, owl, witch's hat, witch at her cauldron, spider, crescent moon, zombie hand, raven, bubbling cauldron, mummy, Frankenstein, scarecrow, candy bucket, graveyard gate, full moon with bats.
• A second panel behind the first for depth — it sits further from the flame, so its shadow is softer and lands behind the main one instead of merging with it. A ghost in front of a bare tree reads as a scene, not a cut-out.
• Panel height 70–220 mm, base square / round / hexagonal.
• Candle type — standard tea light, maxi tea light, or LED. The base depth is derived from the clearance the flame needs, not guessed, and you get a warning if the gap drops below what an open flame wants.
• Engraving on the base — a name, a year, "Grusel Teelichter" — set in one of four typefaces as real cut-and-engrave contours.
• Candle distance and wall distance drive the shadow preview, so you can find the placement that fills your wall before you light anything.
• Both the shadow preview and the cut layout zoom, so a 1.4 mm detail in the silhouette is something you can actually inspect before you cut it.
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What you get

A nested cut sheet ready for the machine, each piece as its own file, and an assembly guide with every dimension on it. Cut lines red, engraving black, 1:1 in millimetres with a proper viewBox — it drops into XCS or LightBurn at true size with nothing to rescale.

Made for the machine, not just the screen

• Kerf compensation applied once across every contour, so slots come out at the width you asked for and tabs actually grip.
• Slot fit — tight, normal, or loose, on top of kerf.
• Stock width — pieces nest into rows no wider than your bed.
• Every silhouette is checked to cut as one connected piece: no detail thinner than 1.4 mm, no hole smaller than 1.2 mm, no island that drops out of the sheet.

Materials

3 mm plywood is the sweet spot; 2–6 mm all work. Use an LED tea light if the piece will be left unattended.