I can’t wait to get my Glowforge and start making more of my art toys! I made these previously through Ponoko, but it’s prohibitively expensive to continue with all the designs I’ve come up with since.
You can check out the whole process on Instructables. With production units starting to ship, I’m shaking with excitement to show off my future Glowforge projects.
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Very cute! 
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Ooooo. I like 
Those are my kind of toys! I really like the watercolor on the wood as opposed to acrylic.
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Welcome @brooklyntonia to the forum. So many amazing topics to explore and you jump right in and add some more!
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Your toys are FANTASTIC!!
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Love the Toys! Awesome job on the writeup on Instructables!
I am the same… hard to contain the Excitement! 
They’re wonderful! Can’t wait to see what you’ll make 
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Watercolor is absolutely the best way to paint a laser cut wood project. Acrylic destroys the beauty of the wood while the watercolor allows it to show through. When I get my Glowforge, I’m going to try out some toys in Acrylic as well, but I’m having trouble finding affordable acrylic.
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Thanks for the warm welcome. I had difficulty participating before when getting my Glowforge was so far away, but now I’m beginning to work on new designs with delivery coming soon.
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I would add stain works very nicely. Since you can get stain in essentially any color (like the cat perches I did in that greenish color). I just asked my local paint vendor/lumber yard to make up custom colors. Was super cheap (they just charged me for a pint of stain and threw in the pigment - actually they gave me a few tablespoons of the pigment in case it was too light which i ended up adding a little bit)
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OMG. Those are super cute!!! 
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Adorable! I love seeing unique projects like this.
I use watered down craft acrylic paint. (very inexpensive at craft stores and walmart) Or cut it with createx pearl white. You can still see the wood grain but with color.
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Is create an airbrush paint? I’ve never used it, but think it was recommended to me for leather at some point.
Also, wondering if a stain might achieve a similar effect to the watercolor paint, in that it should allow the grain to show through?
Yes Createx is designed for airbrushing textiles actually. If you heatset it, it stays pretty well on tshirts and such.
I have lots of it and its thinner so it mixes well with the craft paint but puts a shimmer in it.
Since it doesn’t absorb as much as a dye would, you dont need much to color…so its probably alot more economical than wood dyes.
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Yes, that would have the same effect as watercolor though is still a bit more opaque. A set of watercolors is still cheaper, but it’s a great technique when you need white. I used watered down acrylic on the teeth and eyes.
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Very cool!
Alright, let me rephrase. Watercolor is absolutely the best way to paint a small laser cut wood project imo. If you can get custom mixed stains, that’s pretty cool. It wouldn’t work well on items needing a lot of detail work like my toys, since you couldn’t easily wipe off excess. Larger items with only a few colors would look great with stain.
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So I am guessing these watercolors are better than the watercolors I have used as a kid. I always found they are very mixed-density, with areas much darker than others, which can be very exacerbated in unfinished wood like BB ply, or whatever. Are you using some technique to keep them even throughout the piece? It would be great to put a tutorial together for the rest of us on watercolor techniques on these.
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Well, I’m an artist and and art teacher, so I’ve been painting with those basic sets of watercolors for most of my life. I do have better paints now, but because it’s what I have on hand at school, it’s what I often end up using. A lot, if not all, of the toys I posted were painted with a basic set. There are certainly techniques to getting good results with watercolor. If I can find some of my failed cut projects lying around, I’ll certainly post some tips and tricks.
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