Engraved Veneer Card [Week 3 Task]
Instruction
Looking to create a custom card for Father’s Day or some other occasion? I’ve wanted to investigate engraving wood veneer, so Father’s Day seemed like a good opportunity to put it to use.
Find a Design
For the Father's Day card, I wanted to use a Frank Lloyd Wright-style image. As is often the case, coloring pages are your friend when seeking designs. I imported an image I liked into Inkscape for tracing so I could turn it into vector graphics. I'd never used Inkscape before, but it only took a few minutes of poking around and experimenting to trace the image I chose so I could score it into the card. I exported the generated curves as an SVG file.
Design the Card
I created a simple card design directly in xTool Creative Studio. First I added a rectangle sized to the front of the card and aligned it with the veneer material I was engraving. This rectangle is the cut line. I imported the SVG, sizing it to bleed past the bounds of the rectangle. Then I added another slightly larger rectangle around the first one, using it to subtract the areas outside it.
For text, I chose fonts from my system to add the words Happy in one typeface and Father's Day in another. I selected both and created an outline around them. Again, I used that boundary to subtract from the design to leave some space around the lettering.
Engrave the Card
I first ran a test pattern to determine the right look for the engraving. 150mm/s at 30% power tore away enough of the stained surface to see the lighter wood underneath—just what I was after for the lettering.
When I ran the job, the scoring for the design came out great, but because of some layering in the wood, the lettering didn't come out as I'd hoped. Specifically, the word Happy didn't look as light and some of the letters in Father's Day also looked too dark. To fix this, I set everything to Ignore but the text for Happy and reduced the power for the engraving down to 15%, running it again. This fixed the problem, so I did the same for the last few letters of the line below.
Adhere the Veneer
To complete the job, I sprayed the back side of the veneer with a thin layer of Gorilla Spray Glue. I carefully placed the veneer over one side of the folded card. Unfortunately, I failed to ensure that I had the engraved veneer oriented the proper way. (Don't do this—check first!) Luckily, Gorilla Spray Glue doesn't bond immediately, so I pulled off the card and attached the backup card I somehow expected to need for this project. Finally, I used a paper cutter to trim some of the imperfect edges to make sure the final product looked tight and professional!