Personalized Christmas Gifts. Handwritten Note

The first step was to find an image or use a photo of the animal for the project. In this case I found an image of a pug online (no copyright) and loaded it into Lightburn. Using black and white images seems to work best for me. Also take a picture or scan the handwritten note or recipe or whatever you will be using and save it as an image file.

The next step was to take the image and be able to use it to cut out the actual features of the pug. This is where the great feature of "TRACE IMAGE" comes into play. You will see that I use this for several parts of this project.

1: Click on the image to select it all. (you can also click on CTRL plus A and that will highlight the whole image)

2: With the image selected, right click and select Trace Image.

3: In the screen that shows the image, you will see it is highlighted in purple. This is what you are going to now cut out.

4: You can adjust the threshold as needed by using the slide bar. (slide it back and forth so you can see what it does) . Then select Delete Image After Trace. This will prevent you from having to slide the image off and deleting it.

5: Now that you have the image you will be cutting out, resize it to whatever size you want for your project.

6: Since I will be cutting this out from a 12x12 piece of wood, I create a box that is 12X12 around the image by selecting the Create Rectangle Button.

7: To make a perfect square you can do this in several ways. While creating the square hold the Shift key and the left mouse button and draw the square. You then can adjust the size to what you want. In my case, I made it 12X12. You can also just create a rectangle, unlock the lock to adjust the size and change both the width and height to your desired size.

8: Place the square around your image and now we want to center the image inside the square.

9: Click on the image (pug), holding the Ctrl key, also click on the outer square. then click on the Center Button from the toolbar and this will center the image inside the square. (you can do this with any shape be it square, rectangle or circle)

10: At this time you may want to save your project since we will move to the next step of creating the handwritten message part.

In this next step we are going to take the image you created with the handwritten note. You can either work on the same workspace and just work outside the work area or if you have saved your project, create a new project page. In this step, we are going to do the same thing we did in the last step by using the "Trace Image" feature to copy the hand written note to be engraved on your project.

1: Load your image on the workspace

2: Select the Image

3:Right Click on the image and select Trace Image

4: Adjusting the image to the settings you want with the space bar and select Delete Image After Trace

5: In this case you may see some additional purple areas that show up like a border or extra dots. Do not worry since you will be able to erase those after you select trace image and hit OK.

6: With the image now on your workspace, if there are any extra markings you need to remove, select the image and from the toolbar above select ungroup. This allows you to remove any unwanted portion of the image as shown in the attached photos

7:Once you have the image exactly as you want it, resize it to what you want so it can be place on your project.

8: If you save your original project, then save this portion as well.

Now to put this all together.

1: Open the original project. (in my case it was the pug)

2: with the project open, go to File then Import and bring in the image you created of the handwritten message.

3: If needed resize the message to the desired size and move it onto the project where you want it to be engraved.

4: At this point while that image is selected, I would select a color from the cut pallet to be able to assign it to engrave and be able to set your settings for this portion of the project. The Pug portion will being cut out and the message part will be engraved.

5: At this time you should have two different lines under Cuts and Layers. This now allows you to create the settings needed to complete the project.

6: You may need to test you material prior to creating the project to see what settings work best with you machine. In my case I am using the D! Pro 20 Watt. I set the cut settings to 420 mm/min at 80% power and 1 pass. For engraving the note, I also set it to fill but you can see what you like best for your project. I used 3500 mm/min at 50% power and one pass. Again you can test your material to see what works best for your project.

7: Please note that for darker engraving, you can use the borax method and apply with a sponge brush to just the area you want the note engraved. (1 Tablespoon borax added to 10 tablespoons of very hot water and mixed well.) Once this has been applied, allow it to completely dry for several hours before engraving. This is an optional step and is not necessary.

Now that your project has been both cut and engraved you may want to add a border to the piece. I keep all my scraps and make good use of them whenever possible.

1: Take a piece of scrap that still has the full outside width of the piece of wood.

2: Keep in mind that most 12 x 12 pieces really are not a full 12x12 and may be more like 11.85". Measure your project piece and the scrap wood first.

3: using the work area, create a square of the exact size of the project piece. Click on the arrow to bring you back to the outline so you can work on the square.

4: With the square highlighted, select the offset tool from the tool bar on the side. (see image). Select Inward, then select the Corner Style (Round, Bevel or Corner) Then select the size you want the border to be from the offset distance. You can test several sizes by running frame till you find the size you want.

5: Once you have decided on the correct border size, using you scrap piece of wood, you can cut out the border. If your scrap piece border is the exact same size as your project piece then you will only need to cut the offset piece. So again I would put that offset on a different color line so you would only cut the offset piece and keeping the original border from you scrap piece. This is done by turning off the output of the outer portion of the border. (see images)

6: with the border cut an the piece finished, you can then glue on the border to the project giving it that finished look.

With everything completed, you may want to add a nice clear coat to your project. I use Minwax Polycrylic Clear Coat on my projects.

I also made a mini version of each project and created and ornament to go with each piece without the handwritten note.

Good Luck and I hope this helped in some way to personalize your project.