I had a new sheet of PG lack acrylic and some leftover plywood from a project. My boy (6 1/2) is really into puzzles and geography, so…
1.) Downloaded United States map and imported it into inkscape. I traced the outlines by hand using the sketch tool (black).
2.) Box tooled the rectangle (green) and added labels (red) including fun descriptions that will challenge him to read but should be in his ability level.
3.) Saved as PDF and converted texts to strokes.
4.) Cut the black and green marks in the wood and engraved the red.
5.) Replaced wood with acrylic, switched the red text to “ignore.” Switched black cut lines to “score.” Cut the green as before.
Took about two hours to trace the design and get it the way I wanted it. The word took a little less than an hour and a half and the acrylic took about 10 minutes.
Cool. Have done a number of geographic puzzles since having the GF. Have an order for a U.S. puzzle. Trying to decide what to do with R.I., DE, CT & N.J.
They are a little small for small hands. Might combine several in the northeast. Also how to not confuse the very young as to the true location of Alaska and Hawaii.
I elected to do just the contiguous states for this project. Just a pet peeve of mine that flat puzzles always distort the sizes of Alaska and Hawaii, so I decided to make that someone else’s job to explain somewhere in the future!
Occasionally someone offers a file of their project … but, we should never request the file. An individual may not feel they can say no … and their efforts and work shouldn’t make them feel they have to share. Hope you understand.
I’d take a slight issue with that. Personally, I don’t mind sharing files at all, but I could understand why some people might. Can we perhaps agree that the best avenue is to request via a private message rather than a public forum?
