December 2022 Update

December in Seattle means gray skies and short days. Our family’s got the “Seattle glow” that comes from a few months without much sunshine. With the holidays around the corner, it seemed like a great time to get out of town and recharge our solar cells. (Maybe even get a little tan!) So our family’s planning a trip to Puerto Vallarta to recharge. Our last big trip was in 2019, so we’re long overdue. I can’t wait!

In the meantime, I’ve been filling these long winter nights with—what else?—new projects. Last night’s project was leather - a quick patch for my travel cap that came out even better than I expected.

One of the things that’s magical about Glowforge is how many possibilities it opens for making. Almost every tool in the world works with only one material. You can buy a high-performance table saw, and it’s still only ever going to cut wood. (Well, you can use it to cut other things, but you know what I mean: it’s intended for wood.) Leather working involves totally different tools—and they’re usually just for leather.

Glowforge is different. Your Glowforge makes you a woodworker. It turns you into a papercrafter. It lets you, like me, experiment with leather after putting it aside for a while. You instantly have the skills to work with all of these new materials—it’s a little bit like Neo plugging into a computer and seconds later saying, “I know kung-fu.” (Except we don’t require installing any ports into your body.)

I think about that all the time. I love that sense of possibility, that with Glowforge you can explore any material and make it your own. I want everyone to have that feeling, so this month I asked the team how we can inspire people to experiment with new materials.

And hey, wouldn’t you know, they came back with a pretty simple answer: Have a sale on our favorite Proofgrade® materials, and show everyone some of the coolest things they can do with them.

So that’s what we’re doing! For a limited time, our favorite Proofgrade® materials are up to 50% off. Plywood, acrylic, hardwood, and more—it’s all waiting to bring your ideas to life. And the end of the year is a great time to experiment with new materials.

I’m working with leather again, and I want you to try it, too. So I asked the team to put leather on sale. Besides my hat, I made a leather luggage tag for our trip. I printed it in no time, and even for a simple project like this I got that rush of accomplishment, because I was doing something new.

Then I started thinking about some of my other favorite materials. Veneer is one of the easiest and most stunning project materials - just engrave and cut to style up anything. How cute are these narwhal veneer stickers? And I love the veneer laptop covers our community members have been showing off. Taking a thing that’s as uniform as a laptop and turning it into a warm, personalized, dare I say, “work of art”? That’s what Glowforge is all about.

Thanks to the team, vibrant red cherry veneer, buttery maple veneer, and deep, dark walnut veneer – all on sale through January 4. (And this veneer card holder makes a great gift in case you need last minute inspiration!)

And remember, these are real hardwoods (with real 3M adhesive on the back), so they’ll age beautifully. The cherry in particular will take on deeper burgundy tones with sun and time!

If you celebrate Hanukkah like my family, you know that there’s a box somewhere with a dreidel floating around the bottom, which you may or may not be able to find for that time when everyone’s stuffed with food, bored, and looking for something to do. Well, search no more. I’m delighted to share that the snap-and-spin dreidel I talked about last month is now available in the Catalog!

And (you may see a pattern here) the maple plywood needed to make it is now also on sale. Beech works really well with this design, too, and that’s another material you can experiment with.

It definitely feels like the end of the year (particularly here in Seattle where the sun sets at 4:30 in the afternoon). It’s easy to just coast from here, or hibernate and wait for the sun to return. But I say it’s also a time to get a head start on something new. Onto 2023!

PS: You can discuss the update here!

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