Materials:
1/4 inch wood
Key ring
Sticker paper
Equipment:
Computer with Adobe Illustrator:
Traceable photo
Outline of photo
Image for sticker
Laser Cutter
Sticker Printer
Open the drop down menus for more information
This picture of Declan is a good one and is funny but would not work well as a cutout. the shape would not be right for making a keychain.
This is my cat Apollo sleeping on a beanbag. He is really cute and his head is complex and a good shape for making into a keychain.
For this step I used the Curvature tool to trace the outline of my image and created smaller filled in areas to show the details of Apollo's face and ears. Then I put a hole in the top left ear for the key ring.
When I first sent the job to the laser cutter, I had put the hole for the key ring too close to the edge and it broke off the first time I put it in my backpack. The next class I repositioned the hole and re-cut it and it worked this time.
For the sticker, I looked up pictures of sunsets and chose this one. I have no idea why I chose a sunset but it was my only idea. To create the sticker I had to make a copy of the illustrator file for the laser cut and take everything out of the middle. Then I used a tool to make the hole and outline grouped together such that the clipping mask on the image would not have the circle in it. After that I had to change the stroke of the outline and hole to be 1 pt and a certain color found in the downloadable color library on the portal so that the sticker would be cut out.
When the sticker was done printing, I stuck it to the back of the keychain and I am really happy with how it came out. I really like how the front looks despite not having much detail. I also like how the back looks although the sunset wasn't the best choice of image.