It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...' well it is in Kitronik HQ now that we've made these awesome decorations using our newly stocked Glitter Acrylic! You're all thinking 'Glitter, what a nightmare, it'd go everywhere!' Well, you can rest at ease as the glitter effect is inside the material, so there's no mess, just cool decorations!
With evenly distributed glitter particles to create eye-catching displays, we thought it would be the perfect excuse to also get creative! We chose the colours Gold, Red, Silver, Green and also Dark Blue for Christmas, however, any colour will work perfectly. This post explains how we made these decorations, but there are so many projects that Glitter Acrylic would be great for! Some examples include tags with name engravings, cake toppers, signage or plaques, or even adding additional electronics similarly to our
ZIP Tile LED Pumpkin.
We Used:
Although we really like the
glitter acrylic, you can also use any laser friendly material. Some
plywoods might look quite nice too!
Choosing Glitter Colours and Software
In regards to shapes and colour combinations, this was our personal preference, but the best thing about these projects is that it is totally personalisable to what you want! This refers to the sizing of each decoration too as all of the Glitter Acrylic Sheets are all 600mm x 400m in length and width, and 3mm thick. We decided to have a size limit of 60mm x 40mm, which means approximately 100 decorations can be made! For our tree, we made a stocking, a bauble, a tree, a bell and a snowflake to show off how awesome the Glitter Acrylic looks in all colours! To design your shapes, most laser cutter software will import DXF files, which are common drawing files that most editors can open. If you do not have a drawing software to make DXF files, another easy to use software is
LibreCAD, which we use in this example, and it's free!
Designing Your Decorations
We decided to start off with a bauble as it is a simple shape to get you going! Starting off, we set a limit of 40mm wide and drew a circle to fit the parameters. Then we added a rectangle to the top part of the circle, measuring 4mm high and 10mm long. Afterwards, we added a 2mm diameter hole for string/thread to be later attached. Then, trimmed the inside lines so it looks something similar to our design below.
We also wanted to make a 3D Christmas tree, so we created a triangle with curvature sides, and duplicated it. To get the 3D effect, one has to slot inside the other. As the Acrylic is 3mm thick, a slot of 3mm after cutting is ideal. One tree has the slot going down, the other up, with both finishing halfway. The, to hang it up, a hole of 6mm diameter should be put on each tree.
The Santa boot was cut from two different colours, red and silver, and then glued together.
The End Result!
A couple of other designs have been made too, including a bell and also a snowflake. These all follow a very similar process to the bauble design, and are super simple to create! The only thing left to do after the making is decorating! You can put them on your Christmas tree as we have, or elsewhere, it's only limited by your imagination!
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