I’ve been laying low as of late, but I did put together a quick/simple ornament to include in our holiday cards this year. As I’ve shared before, I make an ornament every year with a completely different technique. I usually only make a handful of them, but since I wanted to be able to send them in the mail, this turned out to be relatively quick and inexpensive for all 80 of our card recipients! The saying isn’t mine - it’s really common this year - but I did the design work with a clip art deer I had purchased a few years ago. I’ve gotten some really nice notes from people about them.
I printed the design with my color laser printer on cherry paper-backed veneer from Cards of Wood and then cut it out with my Glowforge. The little deer was also printed on the front of our envelopes. It was super easy, although I used the wrong settings in round one and did some serious damage to my Seklema mat. Oops. Also, you can see that they could have used a tiny bit of sanding… that’s not the wood. That’s the paper backing. It wasn’t completely cutting through in the end, but I was too lazy to mess with the settings again.
Also, those of you who have watched my Snapmark saga for years will appreciate this. I printed the snapmarks on the sheet of veneer but 80% of the time, my GF refused to acknowledge them (I checked the size, etc., so not sure what was happening) and it was taking a long time to snap anyway. I ended up just using them to manually line up the file by sight (they were the only common items between the printed veneer and the GF cut file).
Thank you. I wanted something that acknowledged the craziness without being super negative or over the top. My second choice was “Stink. Stank. Stunk.” but this one won out because the deer looked so adorable on our envelopes.
I’ve never considered throwing a sheet of veneer through a printer before, the results you’ve got make me want to try it out. Is there anything specific to watch out for?
When I printed my business cards first before cutting them on the laser, the toner rubbed off easy, so probably hitting it with some shellac or polyurethane afterwards might do the trick to seal it in.
This veneer is specifically intended for this purpose, but obviously you want to make sure the grain goes in the right direction to bend properly in your printer (short grain). This particular paper-backed veneer easily went through my printer much like cardstock. I have a slightly thicker veneer that really needs a straight feed. It’s just too much for it to pass through all those rollers.
Also, I did not finish these with anything and did not have any issues with the design rubbing off (so far, anyway), but if I had more time, I would have finished them just to be safe. I think the results depend a lot on the printer and mine seems to run very hot.
Oh, and while the cherry is beautiful, I had to carefully pick out the lighter sheets because otherwise the deer was lost on them. They do have tips on which sheets print best on the site. The cherry prints nicely, but some of the sheets were really dark.
Please note that porous woods such as Ash, Oak, Sassafras and Walnut do not print as well due to the natural (open) grain of the wood. When printing on these woods, we do not recommend full ink coverage, fine detail(s) or small text.
Oh, neat! I didn’t know they made a veneer that would go through a laser printer, thanks for the link! Now I’ve gotta think up a project that needs that stuff.
Thank you. Yes. It needed to be a bit heavier, but the test cuts had worked. So, after nearly setting my mat on fire at 11pm and scrambling to get these cut and stuffed for mail the next day, I decided that good enough was good enough. Honestly, I didn’t notice these wispies until I took the picture, so I imagine most of my recipients didn’t notice (also, most of the ornaments came right out… just a few needed to be popped out.). This is me learning to accept the slight imperfections in life…
