I downloaded this project from Claudette with the intention of putting it on an antique sled I had. But then I realized I needed to replace the sign in the middle of the door wreath I made and this would be perfect. I changed up the color to match up my wreath with a few other changes mentioned below. I love how it came out.
I loved this file from Claudette but decided to turn it into a sign for my existing door wreath.
I first took the mittens and removed the engraving bar in the middle and the snowflakes on top. I then added in more engraving dots.
To remove the engraving bar I added a rectangle and surrounded the 2 bars and clicked on combine subtract. I did the same to the circles as I wanted to create a whole new pattern. Once the mittens were empty minus the cuff engraving I added a circle to the matt and copied it multiple times to get the desired pattern. I then selected the dots and combined them. In hindsight this might have been a mistake because the laser went line by line instead of doing each circle individually and there was a lot of wasted travel time between the two mittens.
I removed the sled image since I would not be using that part of the pattern. I simply highlighted all those parts and hit delete on my keyboard.
I wanted the sign to be all one piece, so I deleted the outline around the words by clicking on them and selecting delete. I then placed the mittens above the words and selected the words and the mittens and clicked on outline. I then widened the outline until there was one outline around both the words and mittens. The resulting outline included some inner pieces so I selected a hexagon from the shapes and adjusted it to cover all the inner pieces. I selected that and the hexagon and clicked on combine, subtract. I next added a circle to the mat and copied it and added one to each side of the backer as hanging holes for the wire I would use. I selected both circles and the backer and clicked on combine, subtract at overlap to group them.
I used the large snowflake from the original design to put above the words, but then I added a snowflake from the image gallery of XCS and made a copy and placed one on either side of the words.
I suck at lining things up straight so I appreciated that the original file came with a score line for the letters. I didn't bother doing the same for the snowflakes or mittens to cut down on run time.
I engraved the mittens using the above parameters for engraving.
I cut out the backer, mittens, letters and snowflakes.
After everything was cut out I wiped down the pieces. I used Polyurethane on the Walnut to bring the grain of the wood out. I used Rubbing Alcohol and a paper towel to removed the burn marks from the EcoRed and White Sub Board, and to remove the dust from the engraving on the mittens.
To assemble the sign, I used wood glue and a silicon brush. I started with the words and placed them over the score marks, then I added the mittens, and finally the snowflakes.
I attached wire through the 2 holes at the top and ran it through the wreath I had already made.