So I love making ‘things’ with my Glowforge, but even more so I have become enamored with using it to make the things I need to make things. As such I stumbled over some posts about stencils and have to say I love this project concept. Big shout out to Bay Stencil for the first stencil I worked with, that isn’t an affiliate or paid promotion or whatever, I just found their interface super simple and the digital download of a massive set of workable files was appreciated (though the new projects I am working on I am designing my own stencils from scratch, this was a great way to see if I liked the process without throwing hours at it to start).
This first test was super fun and something I was able to do with the kiddo to help him make a gift for his mom for mother’s day coming up. I made the stencils in cheap .125" underlayment because I had a mess of it laying about and its rigid enough that we got to do a handful of tries already while he picked the color combos he wanted and got “crafty” (He added white speckles to her hair to make it like a star field). If I remember I will post the final product after he is happy with it and I build him a frame (also on the GF for etched embellishments ).
If you haven’t seen or tried this kind of project, I highly recommend. Super low barrier to entry for making them if you don’t feel like doing your own design (though I promise you will once you have done one) and all in all was a great little one day project.