Dia de los Muertos: papel picado

Just a quick proof of concept. Needs tweaking, but the Glowforge can do something like this so well. 16 minutes.

Papel picado along with sugar skulls and many other traditions are common for the celebration of the Day of the Dead. When I went to Cuernavaca last spring, I noted the cutout tissue paper that was for sale all over and also decorated many establishments and homes.

Spanish speaking community is growing in our church and we have been busy in the last several months getting ready for various meetings and celebrations. It seems that preparing for the novena before Our Lady of Guadalupe made us forget to get something going for this special day today. Next year we’ll mark the occasion and I hope to have encorporated into the mass of remembrance these paper tokens of those who have died. The best will be to give each person a couple stock designs and have them pick the one they want customized with the name and dates and perhaps some special symbols. Baby steps.

so this year it is just one and it was fairly simple to do. Craftsmanspace furnished the CC licensed design. It needed some tweaking. Most important to put the final outside cutline in a different color to cut last. Need to tweak the objects and nodes for efficient cutting.

Most likely would use some type of light adhesive to keep the paper down better and the little bits from flying all over the place as they are cut free. Definitely need tape on all four sides to keep the paper from getting blown up and out of focus.

I haven’t weeded it all, but just getting it out there on this special day. And may all the souls of your own special dead be at peace and your memories of them be sacred.

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Well, that’s gorgeous! :grinning:

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Here in San Antonio, this style of cut out is used extensively for Fiesta. A week+ long festival. Thanks for the idea. Maybe I’ll be able to make my own now. :wink:

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Nice work! Very special!

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Oh, how nice! Customized ones sound like a great idea!

I wonder if spraying the back of the tissue with a low-tack, repositionable adhesive would help keep things in place? Like maybe [this](Krylon K07020007 10.25-Ounce Easy Tack Repositionable Adhesive Spray https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000A8AYO4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_vle.zbE6AXX0C) one, also available at your local Michaels.

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I had Loctite general purpose spray that works well. Spray it on the cardboard only a light spray and you can pull it off generally. Didn’t bother because I didn’t want to spend too much time with this. One thing though is that the resulting print has very narrow sections and is quite delicate so pulling it off the tack without ripping, but having it hold enough to keep the little bits of paper from flying all over the place is a fun challenge.

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We can’t discuss settings in this forum section. Search over in Beyond the Manual and you’ll find plenty of discussion on custom settings.

This might be a design that 1) if can modify it, and 2) you will use on a regular basis, it might be worth it to make the fiddly bits so that they are perforated, not fully cut out. For a really important file, it might be worth the time. (disclaimer: I haven’t done it yet, so I don’t know if this is a time-effective effort or not.)

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