Found these IKEA trays which are just a smidge too tall to work with the crumb tray. Built a simple jig with a square cut in a board and a stack of wood squares high enough to engrave the tray but low enough not to get bumped by the laser head. Planning to sell these at an upcoming Christmas market (so very early but likely good timing, it’s early November). Will offer personalization in the circles for kid and pet names. I’m happy with the end product, but that engrave takes 54 minutes. Not sure if I could speed it up, and I’m happy with the finals.
Took a photo with kid-friendly milk and possible adult preference whisky (well, for the photo it’s strongly brewed tea).
It might be doable to make a stamp and essentially stamp/paint the design onto the tray. You could make custom smaller stamps for the customized parts and do a second stamp of those parts… that way you’d only be on the hook for lasering the custom bits.
If I had to make a lot of them I’d be trying to lean in that direction anyway.
Interesting idea. I am not sure the bamboo would take the stamp cleanly, I’ll have to play. I do like the engrave element, but it does take a bit long. I hope they sell well at the market, but I have no idea if they would.
Have you done them before? This is one of those “I’ll run out” or “I honestly thought they’d sell” ideas. I know Santa boards are a thing and I prefer these to a cutting board.
I sold three last year. I am only bringing about six . Mine are generic but I do have a sign and examples of personalized ones that they can special order
this is cool and something to explore, but it misses on the text for me, which gains personality from the lines having thick and thin, such as the taper on the lines on the underscore, and the thicks and thins are essential to the font. But I’ll play with some options, and certainly I could do a hybrid where certain elements are scored because the thick/thin isn’t as needed. I like the doodle and freehand feel and the variance within the individual lines is needed. Certainly, I could score the snowflakes for a maybe a few minutes of time savings. I’m going to play with that.
Yeah it’s definitely a different direction. I like all the things you mentioned about your engrave, it’s successful because it seems to hand-drawn. It’s really hard to get anything like that out of any other process. Maybe you just need to get 5 more glowforges all going at the same time and then charge people a lot for the trays
You just need good branding. Elf on a shelf somehow managed to convince a zillion people to buy creepy elf statues that they promise won’t steal your soul while you sleep… You need something that rhymes, like “tray for the day” or “seats for your treats” and you’ll rake it in.
