As is tradition, I will show the end result first.A couple bald eagles landed on the island by our campsite (you can only barely make it out). My dad pulled out his crappy little point-and-shoot, and did his best to capture the moment!NOW can you see the eagles? Still no?!First step was to creatively recreate the scene with some vector line art. I used a graphics program called Illustrator for this step, but of course there is free open-source software out there that does the same thing.I knew of an acquaintance that had his very own laser cutter. He graciously allowed me to make use of his awesome toy, and his expertise as well! There is always some tweaking to be made, which is why we cut a cardboard prototype to fine tune how it will look.Okay, I tweaked and I tweaked, but now the file is ready for the real deal.Behold, the vaunted laser cutter in all of its glory!I decided to use maple ⅛ inch ply for the finished product. Maple is the lightest wood, and I wanted the dark etching to pop.Etched wood smells smoky gooooooodIf you ask my girlfriend, this was the high point of the project. She preferred it before I painted it. She may be right, but oh well!The simple matter of applying pigment to the laminated wood was harder than I thought. Nothing water-based (watercolor etc) was adhering to the surface. Here I am trying out alcohol based pigments, which did work okay.There was a good side and bad side to the laminated surface. The ink sits on top, so if I get it wet again, I could pretty easily rub it off and try again. Unlimited do-overs yay!! The bad side is that I had trouble getting the texture or depth I wanted if getting the paint wet again it just kind of slides it around.I fussed with it for quite a bit, but here it is pretty much all painted up.[Me to myself] Alright stop fussing with it already! Give it a rest, wrap it up buddy!Now I enter the final stage of the project, making the frame.I had some cedar 2x2 sitting around, I thought that might look good.Wax on, wax off.Uh oh. This doesn’t look quite right. The frame is all chunky, and the picture is all piddly. Sigh… okay back to the table saw.Okay, the thinner frame looks better!Might as well try it out on my wall for the time being. When I visit my dad in a couple weeks, I’ll see if he likes it! Thanks for viewing my little project! via /r/DIY https://ift.tt/2tyqApq
