A close friend has been under a lot of stress lately, and is really down. I wanted to make her something that would lift her spirits anytime she saw it. There were a lot of cutouts that I wanted to use for another purpose. In the end, I made a gift, a wall plaque and a goofy yin-yang symbol. (I’ll paint it next time; Sharpies didn’t meet my needs on this one.)
I glued some of the cutouts onto waste from one of the cuts, after I scored the waste piece. The 3-D effect is bothersome, I think.
I need to tweak this design a bit before I offer it here. The last time I used Illustrator was in 2006; I used to be a master. Today was sort of like trying to re-learn a language I once knew well. Plus, I’m using a vintage 2003 Macbook–it can be hard to see the fine detail for positioning multiples. The score lines of the center motif are lasered thru two passes in different directions, so I’m going to need to delete the overlaps in the file.
Many years ago I was a jeweler, and hand-cut the design in silver for a pendant I made. (Jeweler’s saw with a super-fine blade. I domed the metal first, then cut the design. Otherwise, it distorts.)
I’m going to make a display stand for it. When faced with engineering artistry, I think of 10,000 things to do, knowing I only have time for one.
In the meantime, the idea about being a wall plaque is appealing. I’m going to cut the biggest possible set from draftboard. I think the proportions will be better suited to larger. It will certainly be easier to weed! That takes longer than the cutting and drafting.
I still have some that are older; one even runs on the earliest versions of OS X. The oldest one is a Fat Mac, with operating system disk. However, none of them have Illustrator & Photoshop except this one and the backup: another MacBook.
