My first “Made on a Glowforge” post… gasp… I feel like Po when he first enters the Sacred Hall of Warriors on Kung Fu Panda. I SO don’t feel like I should be here yet.
So, after the dedication of Emmet via printing the Founder’s Ruler (see “Hello World! Meet Emmet”) I looked at my son, and said, “Whaddya say? Wanna draw something and see what we can do?” He immediately started drawing a pokéball with a mini, black sharpie. We put it in the 
and scanned it. Next step? Draw a box around the artwork. I tap and the screen goes white… nothing… back up, try again… same… Turns out this feature doesn’t work out so well from a tablet, at least not for me anyway. Grabbed a laptop, and started over.
Drew a box around the pokéball, and get the “click the area you want to cut out” screen when I noticed a problem. The marker was certainly dark but it came out thin, so the inside of the ball somehow was also a part of the outside—it was gonna cut almost everything but a vague outline. So we grabbed a marker & thickened it up… Worked like a charm, clicked through and got ready to print.
[sidenote: wasn’t really paying attention and had him draw what he wanted right on the 
. Once we went to print realized it was too far in the corner and decided to cut elsewhere; so the drawing was left to cut over later with something else and since it was just on the masking there wasn’t any issue. So in case you weren’t aware, you don’t have to draw directly on the wood. Just draw on something, use the camera to scan and you’ll place the artwork where you want on the wood before you print. Should’ve been obvious to me, but we were excited and not exactly thinking. The first day was really more of a “Ready. Fire. Aim” sort of day.]
I was surprised at first that it literally engraved everything he drew and cut around it all. Not sure why this surprised me—it makes perfect sense—but I guess I just assumed it was going to cut around the inside of the outer stroke. I vaguely recall reading somewhere you can define where the line cuts (outside edge/middle/inside edge) but I may be thinking something else.
Anyway, within a matter of minutes, my 7 yr old took a random picture from his head and turned it into a sweet, awkward, amazing little token that you can see, touch, feel, and marvel at. So naturally we had to color half of it with a red sharpie to make it look authentic!
This kid wants to be an inventor someday & I couldn’t think of a better way for him to start! Thank you, thank you, thank you, @dan & the rest of the Glowforge team!
