Four files attached here for everyone to use + enjoy if they like. Story about how I went about it below…
So for whatever reason, my two six-year old kids have, between them, 63 fellow classmates. Last year we tried to assembly-line some handmade Valentines but the kids lost steam after doing maybe a dozen themselves and then it became a slog for the parents to finish the job. But now we have a Glowforge. I picked whales and turtles because they’re my kids’ favorites. This is the first time I’ve done any engraving (all cutting until now) and I’m really happy with how they came out.
HOWEVER, I didn’t realize how long engraving took – each animal took about ten minutes to cut, and if you multiply that times 63 kids, you end up with about 11 hours of total cutting. So I went about making a simpler design that would be quick to cut. I ended up doing some quick sleepy faced hearts with an angular design that would nest nicely (assuming every other row was inverted) and waste very little space. The purple you see in the photo is crayon drawn on the draft board after peeling off the outer ring of paper – inside “face” was still protected by the remaining paper while the kids color. I can fit 60 on a single sheet of 12x20 board and it takes an hour and a half to cut.
Long story short: I’m going to give the nice whale and turtle to my own kids and make 63 of the simple heart face ones for them to give their friends. Would have been nice to give out the animals to everyone but hey, efficiency wins.
I thought other parents might be hard up for Valentine’s ideas and could use these. Four SVG files are in the zipped folder – enjoy!
Cut Files.zip (60.0 KB)
