Note: I have been reading the forums non-stop since Oct 2015, but this is my very first post…
I have a family wedding coming up this weekend and the groom is super into bow ties. I am too!
The groom likes bow ties enough that the wedding invitation actually said “bow ties preferred”. Nice!
Anyway, I decided a long time ago that I wanted to make a select few family members matching bow ties.
However, my Glowforge Pro is delayed (still), so I took matters into my own hands!
I designed a bunch of bow ties using Adobe Illustrator and sent the final files to Ponoko.com
In case you don’t know, Ponoko is a 3D printing, CNC machining and laser cutting service.
They do great work, but they are EXPENSIVE!
I was able to fit 6x bow ties (various sizes) on their 181mm x 181mm sheet of 3.5mm thick veg tanned leather.
The final work piece looked like this:
In case you are wondering what this service costs when you don’t yet have your Glowforge, here you go:
Fast forward through some sewing and a lot of hot glueing…
Voila!
Note: each bow tie is slightly different. I customized the name on each bow tie as well as the little picture between the text.
Also, I sized the bow ties according to age (adult size → 5 years old → 3 years old → 8 months old)
Here are some close ups:
Thanks for jumping in the conversation. This is a great contribution to the forum. I love the custom design that, from a distance, doesn’t look custom. I’m looking forward to seeing photos of them in use.
Using their names as part of the design pattern is brilliant. From a distance it looks like a nice geometric hash pattern. Up close and you see it’s personal. Really nice!
oooooh, inspiration: a tie made out of wood, and for the pattern: randomly-placed holes in the shape of termite-bites surrounded by engravings of the termites eating the wood. hm…
One gotcha with the living hinge ties – they are relatively short-lived. Our local makerspace printed cut some ties as a test and although they are amazingly supple, they snapped in half pretty quickly. YMMV depending on how much you let admirers play with them.
Good eye – was going to ask about the earrings too.
I actually bought one of those longer living hinge wood ties a couple years ago to give to Brian.
…(I wonder whatever happened to that thing? I don’t remember actually giving it to him…hmmmm.)
Anyway, I can soon make a new one.
Might even sprinkle a few of these on it, just for grins.
Love it! I am crazy about 18th and 19th century-style naturalist illustrations. I could see getting a really nice Isoptera illustration and engraving it on a tie…
My ex-husband is a spider biologist, so I actually have a spider species named after me: sisicottus cynthiae (wow! I was just checking the spelling online to see that there’s a wikipedia entry for it! wooo hoooo! Sisicottus cynthiae — Wikipédia) So, maybe I’ll engrave some of my species drawings into something someday.
Though, I used to tease my ex-husband - spider biologists spend a lot of time drawing spider genitalia. So, a lot of my species drawings are spider-porn!
