The Dragon Cabinet: Let me Tell you about Lasers

Ahoy there! Ellie here.

Alrighty, so you may be a typical artist who loves pencil and paper but have you ever used a paper cutting machine like a Cricut or a Brother?

You load a mat with paper or vinyl or whatever and the machine, attached with a tiny little knife, cuts out little shapes. Some machines can even do lettering with markers. Pretty neat right?! There’s loads of possibilities with something like this, especially if you want to make art that is layered or maybe using different materials. This is the primary tool I used in high school. With this, in consort with my mom’s iPad, I was off to the races making a bajillion cards. Every year I cranked out something for my grandfather. As much as I love hand cutting horrifically tiny details for hours on end, this tool definitely saved me a lot of strife. And as far as traditions go, making a Christmas card every year is a sweet one.

Obviously I'm blacksmithing.
What did you do as a kid?

Actual Real Life image
taken through safety glass

Now, what if I told you I found something even cooler, using the exact same idea? It’s a freaking laser! I know it sounds dangerous and these machines can be pretty pricy, but don’t be scared. I am a proud member of the Nashville Maker Space. If you haven’t watched a lot of Adam Savages Tested like me, you may not know what this is. Essentially it’s a gym membership. You go to the gym and use the stair-master, clean up, and get fit. Except in this instance you don’t get to use workout equipment, you get to use power tools and printers and in this specific example, a freaking laser. All tools come with training classes so you never do anything dangerous and the price of the membership is way less than buying a laser. Plus, it operates just like a Cricut! You just upload your file to cut and place the material under. Now, you are probably wondering why I even need to use a laser. Well, I’m achieving my engineering dreams my fellow adventurer.

I went to animation school because I loved crafting and after learning a lot of the little clubs in the digital arts, I so strongly want to make things with my hands again. Plus, I have so many projects that are becoming more multi-media. For example I participated in the Nashville Animation Conference called “Animation Y’all”. 99% of you dear readers have heard of it and for that 1%, you get a cookie. You can contact my totally real assistant for the mailing details. 🍪📫

Animation y’all was so rewarding for me. It gave me the motivation to prepare the little crafts I couldn’t justify making on my own. I don’t know if anyone else struggles with this but I really have a hard time making art for myself. It’s so much easier to have people relying on me. (However, if you read my last blog post - you know I’m working on it.) My goals for the conference were to laser cut little magnets, resin print some models, and the biggest goal - to cut a whole sign! Since we are talking lasers here, I'm going to skip talking about those models for another day.

In order to make little magnets I needed to first make a design. I grabbed my favorite gouache and very quickly mocked out what kind of shapes and designs I wanted. I always find it easier to plan colors with real paint. (Physical media) Then I traced silhouettes on my Ipad and converted those into a vector that the laser could cut out of some plywood I had. These got painted in the very same gouache and sealed with UV resin. The last step was just to attach magnets or pins to the back!

My very legit and messy plans

So many...

Now, I'm fairly comfortable with little laser projects, but the sign was so challenging. This is a big piece and I had limited materials to use. I knew I wanted to do something stain-glass-like but I couldn't just cut acrylic and glue the edges together. I even briefly considered soldering cut pieces together like you do for real glass but the heat would melt the pieces and probably leach some horrible fumes into my apartment. So, I settled on using a piece of wood as the backing and gluing the acrylic on top of it. Just like how people glue cardboard to the back of a finished puzzle to keep it together. I needed to find my largest size of plywood which was around 4x2in. This would become the base measurement for how I would design the sign. My design went through so many iterations. I knew I wanted the text to look like real glass so I found an internet archive of stained-glass lettings and traced the letters for my own front. Extra. I know. Once I got the type I just put my name into it and create the base "Ellie A Lenz" for the logo. I drew connecting lines and details before struggling on the color choice. I only had so many sheets to choose from and one sheet would not be enough material to fill the background. I settled on combining two purples together to get the look.

Referencing color swatches
from other items on my booth

Final Design (Almost)

The assembly portion of this thing was crazy. I designed all the bits just like stained glass but I wanted there to be lines in-between the colors just like the soldering in real stained glass. Ordering 10 yrds of crafting chord would be too expensive but I remembered they make an 1/8th in black foam chord, perfect for my needs. It’s window sealer. Yeah, the little chord they use in-between a window and wall would be my cheap solution.

The last problem I had was attaching all these pieces to wood. It was here I had another clever idea. I didn't want to hand place every pieces by memory and glue them because they might not be lined up perfectly. I was also hesitant about what kind of glue to use. So, I ordered big sheets of acrylic sticky. It's like big sheets of double sided tape and they happen to be a little transparent. I printed off my design to scale and placed the sticky sheets on top. I peeled the top layer and used that guide underneath to place all my cut pieces. Once I was done, I stuck the entire thing to my board. The gaps between the sticky was perfect for putting in my chord -- which was very satisfying to do.

The puzzle

Assembly

Final Sign!

After this adventure I feel like I can tackle anything Laser related. I've made some cool presents including a Catan boarder, a Hollow Knight display for my BF, and even a Wingfeather Keychain. Now I'm working on some boardgame inserts and even a DM screen for a friend! Maybe I'll keep you posted.