Edge Lit Illusion Votives

I just can’t seem to get enough of these edge-lit votive lights. The last ones I did didn’t get the urge out of me so I had to make more. This time it’s illusion lamps (coffee cup is to show scale):

I would like to say I designed the etchings but I’d be lying. I bought the files from 3Bee Studio. I figured it was worth it for only $1 per design. I am however trying to learn how to do it myself by taking the Lynda.com Blender class, and I think I’m getting close.

These are vector files and I had originally intended to just score them but for some of the really dense lined designs that didn’t work too well, especially at this small scale. Too much heat. So I selected all but the cut lines in Illustrator, pasted in Photoshop at 675 dpi, converted to pixels, saved as .png, and placed back in Illustrator and aligned with the cut lines. Engrave settings are here:

Bases were redesigned to use less material and were made from PG Draftboard with default cut settings.

One thing to keep in mind: if you get these files and decide to score, be aware that they contain many thousands of nodes. I went through the Path…Simplify command in Illustrator and got the node count down to a reasonable level.

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Beautiful!

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These are just so cute!!! I’d love to do these but use the elliptical box generator for Inkscape to make round bases. Definite #10 on the post scale.

FYI: you might want to remove the settings references before the BeyondTheManual police show up.!

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Settings are okay for Proofgrade materials (acrylic & Draftboard) :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the clarification. I must admit, my eyes gloss over and my brain shuts down when this whole BeyondTheManual topic comes up so I over-reacted. I guess you are ok @cynd11!:flushed::glowforge:

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Uhhhh…whoa! The balloon one is my favorite, but they’re all really cool. I actually love the size of them and that they’re sitting on a laser cut box, rather than a stand of some sort.

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Just so neat to be able to swap out the acrylic tops for the season or for the celebration theme! I need about twenty of them!

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Wow, just stunning!

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I didn’t know that was a no-no, listing settings used?

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My plan is to use them for little gifts, like stocking stuffers and such, and if I can learn to design them they could feature a theme appropriate for the giftee. I was going to source the color changing LED votives from Michaels, but it turns out that despite the 40% off Michaels coupon, they are still cheaper on Amazon:

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If posting projects on Made on a Glowforge using Proofgrade material, evidently according @jamesdhatch, with tweaking settings. If you are not using Proofgrade, you have to post settings in Beyond the Manual but you can post images and design narrative in Made on a Glowforge.

However in some post somewhere, Dan says non default settings on Proofgrade are Beyond the Manual so II thought we were even supposed to reserve non-default Proofgrade settings to Beyond the Manual

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Apparently I don’t have access to that topic! These forum rules are getting more ridiculous by the day.

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Hey thanks for finding that, I wasn’t sure if I needed to do that or not. Okay, new post in Beyond the Manual with the settings.

Ah, got it. So many rules. :wink:

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These are just so stinkin’ CUTE! :heart_eyes:
(You need to offer those…oh, no, you said you bought them.)

Great stocking stuffer idea!

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Okay, I missed that. And it does make it ridiculous. Most of the cool stuff is in the settings. Engraving one of two shades - dark or light is a use case even the most novice is going to tire of early.

The new power mappings to dithers and gray scales is very cool - I’d expect more people will ask why their stuff doesn’t look like the stuff they see on the forum if we can’t talk about those. Really, there are only a handful of limited PG settings - 1 cut, 2 scores and 2 engraves. Those are starting points even with PG - some of the best stuff is found in the new power/speed/dithering settings.

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@cynd11…those are just the best! What a really fun idea…making miniatures of stuff we all really like anyway. Love them!

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O.M.G. So cool.

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Those look so good! :heart_eyes:

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It’s official. You win the Votive prize!

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