MSRaynsford

It's the festive season so I made this cute little Christmas tree for another project I was working on. It turned out so nicely I gave it a little revamp and thought I'd offer it up here as well. Hope everyone is well and enjoying the festivities.  It's made from 3mm Poplar ply and assembles with press fit joints. The rings just rest on the branches at an angle of your choosing. ( svg here )  

My large scrolling display  has been re purposed into the Christmas lights for this year (as was always the plan). I spent a little bit of time programming some new light patterns and finally implementing the code that lets me import bitmaps into the display. The images are converted to byte array using one of the many conversion programs, I'd quite like to be able to read images directly off an SD card next.

I've been slowly upgrading my Christmas lights over the last few years (and apparently not really blogging it). What started as one 300 pixel string  has crept up to four pixel strings last year and I was going to add a fifth this year. The 'From Shadows' event approached with a strong venue that has power throughout and suddenly I was able to take along my light strip and put it to use displaying messages in the gaol. I purchased two more strings (because it's easier to make fonts with 7 lines) and I bought an Teensy Opto adaptor  to make connecting them all up easier. I tried previously to hang up the strips at various intervals across the distance but there was always a lot of droop in the middle and it was tricky to get all the strips lined up horizontally. This time I attached the whole length to four back boards and cable tied them every 15 pixels. This ended up with a very sturdy system where all the strips stay in alignment despite being moved around....

Ruth , who drew the awesome goblin on the top of my treasure chest, wanted some chalk outline silhouettes for Christmas decorations over on her 'For Real Serial'  website. This 3mm perspex outline was surprisingly sturdy and as always people take much better photos than I do. They look great and would be fun on any tree.

Sometimes I find it hard giving all the widgets and doohickeys meaningful names. I like Christmas foil decorations but this year I've been struggling to keep them hanging from the ceiling, they just keep pulling through the blu tack. Most things can be fixed with a laser cutter though, literally 90 seconds of drawing and cutting and I now have a handful of gadgets cut from 2mm perspex scrap. The string from the foil wraps through the gaps in the disk and the whole disk presses into the blu tack. In theory this should spread the weight load and stop them falling off the ceiling. It's working so far.

I found some time today to make a full version of the new advent calendar. I assembled it with all the doors in order but they can be put in any order you want. I view this as a base for a real calendar, a little flourish across the top or a winter scene and it would make a nice product. You could also change the door knobs easily and size for extra customisation. This version is just large enough for quality street chocolates, obviously I have 22 days worth of chocolate to eat tonight :) ( svg here )

I made an advent calendar 5 years ago and despite requests to start selling them, I could never get them into a sensible time frame or budget. This year the discussion of advent calendars came up again and I decided to take another shot, this is how I would make a calendar now. The handles are made using wooden push pins (they need trimming), the doors are hinged by the wall sections and they rest upon the verticals to stop them being pushed in too far. There is enough friction in the hinge to keep them open during use. Obviously I've missed most of December now but I'll draw up the full 24 door version so I'll be well ahead for next year.

I have a couple of LED strips that I use as Christmas lights . This year I mounted one above the other and I needed some connectors to space them equally across the length. These little hangups were made from 5mm acrylic and allow the strips to slide in and out and clip into place (by squashing the silicon sleeve slightly)

Craft time for the whole family, we're all at home so decided to make some wrapping papers. We started with simple brown paper and carved some potatoes to make printing stamps. For a second sheet we drew a single black line across a page and then finger painted a string of lights onto it, these should provide enough wrapping for a good handful of presents.

Eli drew a picture of a small present he wanted to make for Santa. He measured the size of the bag to find the right scale and he drew the design out on inkscape with a little bit of help. I set up the laser to cut on a small piece of illomba faced poplar ply that he picked from the scrap pile and 45 seconds later we had the item made. 

The school asked me to cut a selection of santa keys for their Christmas fair. It was a simple drawing and cutting keys from my mdf scraps. ( svg here )

I wanted to up my game and make some really fancy tree decorations this year. Laser cutting is very popular this year but a lot of the designs you can buy are just cut straight onto laser ply. I opted for real woods this year, 3mm thick, Spruce, Bass and Mahogany. I test these in ply and then cut them in wood and realised that the best way to make them stand out would be multiple woods in each design.  With 3 base colours I could also mix and match a few designs.   ( svg here ) As you'll have noticed the blog is a bit slower than it used to be while I work upon the vanillabox  but there will be good things coming in the new year, so until then merry Christmas and a happy new year. 

Merry Christmas from me and Just Add Sharks . It's been a busy year and I'm well behind on Project 12 but maybe I'll be able to squeeze a 10th project out before the year end.

The last of my gingerbread experiments for now, there are bigger plans for the new year and more food stuffs to cut but we'll see what happens.

I had a whole sheet of gingerbread to cut so I measured the thickness and calculated an appropriate slot in the material to make a 2 piece Christmas tree. Nothing too fancy, below see it decorated by a child (who also drew and laser cut the gingerbread, by which I mean me)

It's Christmas and I know it is possible to laser cut gingerbread so I thought I might as well give it a try. Eli and I made a batch from the BBC recipe  and he rolled it all flat using some 6mm ply as guides for the rolling pin. The bread expanded to 10mm thick and I drew some shapes for the laser. We went really slowly 2 passes at 10mm/s @ 80W and on the second pass could see smoke coming out the honeycomb so knew it had cut through. We were left with this intricate snowflake 10cm across and a rather nice negative of it too. ( svg here )

I was asked to make a magic Santa key, personalised for my friends children. Ta da. Not sure there's much else to say, it's 3mm mdf painted with metallic acrylics and it's a good job our kids aren't old enough to be reading my blog yet :)

Bit of a slow day today, few bugs going round our house and extra children after school, the only thing I managed to get done was this batch of fairy doors for the local school craft faire. I added a few new elements into the mix (mushrooms and stockings etc) and changed the blue out for purple. I've got enough elements now that no 2 doors will ever be the same which is a nice touch.

I have a Christmas Craft Faire at the weekend, it's the active arts craft market in Countesthorpe  if anyone wants to see me, so I thought I had better make something Christmassy to take along with me. Nichola suggested I make some fairy doors and it was a good idea, lots of places online for inspiration and lots of variety from a few simple pieces. 3 hours of drawing got me 12 different doors and a heap of accessories, 1 hour of cutting 1 hour of assembly. They came out so nice I cut a second set almost straight away. ( svg here ) The panels were coloured before cutting to avoid a whole heap of fiddly painting. I even got to use my linbins  to hold the different colours once they were removed from the laser. I even remember when just one item from these would take all day. It was nice to get these done and out the way.

I made 6 badges in total but these are the four I am now listing in my web stores, it's not too late to get them for Christmas.  The amusing thing about working on tiny scale items in a massive laser  is that the honeycomb bed just becomes additional work surface and you can keep multiple sheets of wood/veneer ready for cutting on the bed.