For some reason I’ve been into making things with felt lately. It probably has something to do with the fact that felt is cheap and colorful and laser cuts nicely. The colorful thing is a bit new to me. I tend not to do really colorful things, so that’s interesting as well. The colors I used for this piece are sort of terrible (in my opinion) but I wanted something “terrible” as it were.
This ribbon was made for Dana’s annual Holiday Bingo Game which has prizes for the winners, and I offered to make a (somewhat sad) ribbon for the first place winner, so here it is.
I started as I usually do, in Inkscape, designing the piece by stacking up objects. You can see the fully designed piece in the lower left corner. (The grey version next to it is sort of an x-ray view showing some of the original parts.) The top row contains the four pieces we’ll cut with the laser cutter. The second piece (red) has a slightly larger diameter than the similar part on the first piece (aqua) to allow for me not aligning things perfectly.
Here are all the pieces in LightBurn ready to be cut. Each piece gets the same cut settings but I assigned them all different colors (layers) as they’ll all be cut separately from different colored pieces of felt. I’ve also started to use LightBurn’s Library feature which allows you to save settings for different materials/thicknesses, etc. I can just click on “Felt” and assign those settings to the layer. Nice!
I think it turned out pretty good. The only thing I didn’t care for (design-wise) is the “st” part of the “1st” on the ribbon. I sort of punted on that (this was a quick project) and I think I could have come up with a better solution. I wanted to connect the letters “st” to the “1” to make assembling the whole thing easier. I think I can do better next time, I mean, if there is a next time. (Who wants a ribbon?)
Overall, though… I’m pleased with the outcome. It helps to have a spray booth and bottle of Super 77 spray glue sitting right next to the laser cutter to make creating these things quick and easy. It’s nice to have an idea for a project and see it completed in under an hour.