MSRaynsford

The Stellated Dodecahedron is back , there was a lot of interest in it at the maker faire and someone even went as far as buying a kit so I figured I better get it working properly. Last time I only cut one but I couldn't really sell it because the material was wrong. I had some 1.5mm ply which was clearly exterior ply and not interior ply so the edges were so horrendously burnt and sooty that it smudged everything. This time around and Kitronik is now stocking 1.5mm Birch that is definitely laserable. So with the right material this thing makes a decent kit, I even managed to make the finger joints so snug that it doesn't need glue to hold together. Puzzle Kits are available from my store  (£12).

By request I was asked to etch an A4 sized stark wolf with a 'Graham of Thrones' caption. I used my prior artwork  which is pretty to the picture sent to me which sped things up a lot. Having a nice clean line drawing allowed me to quickly raster it, to get a version without overlapping tufts and then re vectorise it (the updated 'trace bitmap' in Inkscape is incredible). The image was first engraved but it didn't pop enough for my liking so I put it back in (I hadn't moved the surrounding frame) and outlined the engraving as well. I took the decision to not etch the teeth and to only outline them which I think makes them stand out a bit from the picture. Anyway customer is happy and so am I.