My mom likes to throw design challenges to me. Now that I have a Glowforge laser cutter, it makes them even more fun.
On October 13th, I got my first laser cutter challenge from her. A coworker at her elementary school had some décor with three bats that she thought would be fun to have at home. Along with the photo was a pun, “I wood love one”. Challenge accepted.
The first step was quickly tracing one of the bats in Adobe Illustrator. I also needed to find some nice lettering to go with it. I don’t like my laser cut projects to look like they have been laser cut. I wanted the “Happy Halloween” to look like plastic lettering coming out of a wood block.
I wanted a solid block for the base, but didn’t have any big pieces on hand, but I had a few feet of leftover 2×4. The actual size of a 2×4 is 1 1/2″ by 3 1/2″. The plan was to glue two pieces together, giving me a block that is about 3″ deep and 3 1/2″ tall. Before gluing the pieces together, I engraved “Happy Halloween” into the base…a separate set of letters would be painted white and tapped into place.
The remaining steps:
Glue the 2x4s together to make a sturdy base block, laser cut three bats, find some strong wire (this ended up being upcycled metal hangers in a closet) that was cut to three different lengths, and paint it all black.
I cut out a separate set of “Happy Halloween” lettering and spray painted them white.
Once everything was dry, I drilled some holes in the base block and in the bottoms of each bat and assembled it all.
I think I missed a big opportunity – the bats should be flying out of a bowl of soup…much more relevant to 2020.
