Celebrate Mother's Day by crafting a personalized wall or shelf decoration. This activity is perfect for a family project that results in a keepsake for your mother. The project file includes cutouts that you or your child can paint and arrange. Try incorporating your own patterns to create a distinctive design.
In this step we first need to create a backing board that we will later attach all of the items for the design. For this, I like to simply use a circle. I have sized the circle for 5 and ¼ inches, but you may want to scale everything up for a larger design.
Next add in all of the elements you want for you design. I have added in Tulips, a butterfly and some text. I have included the tulips as they were generated by Microsoft co-pilot.
I thought it would look the best to trace the image of the tulips to get just the outline. I will set this trace up to score. The end result will be simple lines so that the tulips can be colored however you desire. I then added an outline of each tulip. This will be used to cut out the shape. You can see here that I have both set up as different vectors.
The next task is to arrange and scale the elements of the design as desired. Of course you can arrange them however you like after they are cut out, but at this stage, just make sure the parts will fit on the backing board. You may also choose to allow for some overhang of some of the elements. In my example, I chose to allow the butterfly to overhang the edge of the circle backing board. I thought this adds some depth to the design.
Now we need to configure the laser settings. Be sure to keep in mind what you want out of the end design. For example, on the tulips, I wanted to have the trace of the image scored in the wood and the outlie cut. This requires two different processing settings.
The attached file is configured for the D1 with a 5W laser, but you may need to adjust the settings to match your laser.
Lastly, It is time to let the laser process the job. Remember to always to follow safety rules that relate to your laser and to always wear personal protective equipment such as safety glasses.
Once the design is cut out, paint and attach them to the backing board with standard wood glue.