MSRaynsford

It's a bit of a work in progress but I've started to list the places that I buy my materials from. I get asked a lot about the poplar wood ply and I guess a blog post is only relevant for a week before it disappears off the bottom of the page (much like this will). So you'll note the new materials  page in the header which will take you to the ever changing/growing list of materials I'm working with. I'm actually still looking for laserable bamboo if anyone knows where to get some

Every so often (OK quite often) I do things 'just because'. I saw Jordan's Facebook page for White Knight Design pop up on my feed the other day and I thought this material would work well for it. What I really like about this project is the complete overkill. I started with a silver sheet and etched all the background away, leaving the logo proud. I love the matt surface left behind by a high resolution etch. It took an hour to etch 288x114mm so it's completely impractical and for that I love it.

Ed Saperia  (of Heredox fame) introduced me to the wonderful pen and ink artwork of Iain Macarthur  with the best of all questions, "can it be laser cut?". Move forward 6 weeks and while I was exhibiting at the rather quiet Leicester Creator Faire I finally found the 2.5 hours I needed to devote my laser cutter to engraving one of his pieces in sufficient resolution. I love the way the wood grain shows through on the etched patches giving it some extra depth amongst the intricate details. Sadly I fear that the stark black and white of the original does this piece far more justice than the cream and burnt colours of the laser but it was a fun piece to etch and the visitors enjoyed seeing the laser do all of the hard work..

I loved guardians of the galaxy and I was inspired to make this veneer portrait of Rocket and Groot. I used layered veneers on Groot to make the different sections of his body stand out. If I were to remake it I think I would add a little more definition to Rockets gun to make it seem a bit more 3D ( svg here )

I'm always happy to try new materials that people send me to see if they can be engraved and this time it was the turn of Quartz crystals. Slate, Sandstone and Marble all engrave so there was always a chance this could work and as you can see from the image it wasn't a complete failure but the quartz was chipping away under the laser beams so it makes for some very rough edges to the engrave. It's not good enough to warrant doing again but at least it has been tried now.

Over the next few days I'll be making some changes to the blog and adding some content to the bar at the top. I'm starting with the galleries . Underneath the blog I've been storing all my images in several picasa photo albums (they tie in nicely with the blogger interface). Now that the blog has grown to 700+ posts it's hard to randomly browse it all to see all of the things. This way you can browse the galleries directly and more easily find your way to the good stuff. Happy browsing. Oh and btw, having just browsed all the galleries myself, this Iron Man wood veneer is my current most favourite item of all time (subject to change of course)

This is the cake that dinkydoodle designs made, on top of the cake stand that I made. In a rather disappointing twist the stand worked perfectly during testing but failed when it was fully loaded up with cake. The customer was unaware of the rotating potential so nothing really hurt except a bit of pride. More photos of this wonderful cakey creation can be found on their FB page .