@ @rbtdanforth 's suggestion, I am having another go at the peacock design, making it into a lamp (which so many of you loverly folks have displayed, and I have looked at with great envy) I bought some really thin (3mm) Baltic Birch from Wood Workers Source (in AZ) (they supplied me the wood for my butcher block countertops!) - so I have good CLEAN wood for this project.
this was first cut test, still adjusting laser settings, and getting down basic ideas
(I never made something 3D before)
The basic Idea is a LED lamp, with two color vellum as a light diffuser, shimmering green for feathers and white for general light.
As beautiful as I knew it would be. You might want to try to add masking to avoid the staining, and then use Gorilla tape to weed it after. By using one of those box-making pages you can make it with strong corners as well.
Are you in Tucson or Phoenix? I’m down in Tucson. I hit the big two up every week or so. Woodcraft and WWS. Was in Phoenix yesterday and hit up rockier and WWS on Black Canyon. Picked up a nice piece of Purple Heart in the cutoff bin. $1.99 a pound. Not sure it was cheaper than by the board foot.
I am concerned about the inconsistencies, and they may be caused by my own doing, I am burning another piece directly on the Crumb Tray and seeing if using factory settings was my issue!
when I said factory settings, I mean I am testing different settings, but now I am testing everything with the wood pinned to the crumb tray, no more stacks of wood as a base.
before different parts of the wood would be carbon, while other parts where raw… and I got frustrated at the inconsistencies, I am trying to ‘remove random’
But seriously folks, I don’t want it to be clean, I like the fact that it is sooty and a bit crispy, I love a clean look, but for this specific project I think I want to keep it unmasked.
You might want to try to add masking to avoid the staining, and then use Gorilla tape to weed it after. By using one of those 
