XKCD Ornament

Christmas time is here, that means your favorite webcomic will most likely make an x-mas themed comic.

This happened with XKCD, and it made me laugh. I thought it was so clever i wanted to make an ornament so i can hang a little big of nerdyness on my tree this year. All this took was a laser cutter and acrylic!

You can use this to transfer any comic into a fun and festive ornament!

Step 1 Preparing your images

The first step is to prepare you images for the laser cutter.

I had to first take out the color from the image using an image editing program. Next i used illustrator to put the image into curves.

Putting the image into curves allows the laser cutter to make the lines more clean and crisp.

Lastly i used corel draw to layout how it would be engraved and cut. I had a nice border and a hole for an ornament hook.

Comments

[drbill]

I gonna use one of those car air fresheners ( Christmass Tree Kine ) and make it an orneryment .

[craftyv]

I have used the original xkcd "tree" as my screen saver and it makes me smile every time I see it. It is , in my eyes, beautiful and very witty. Frenzy. I love your "etching" and am jealous of your skills. I will never own a laser cutter and most certainly don't have the skills to use one. Very good work all round.

[scienceguy8]

Considering this xkcd went up a mere 20 hours ago, that is pretty darn impressive.

[TheGeek1984]

I have an XKCD gadget on my desktop, I hadn't checked it all day. That is impressive!

[craftyv]

What is a xkcd gadget please? I want one.

[D00M99]

...
I don't quite get the comic...

[Clayton H.]

A "heap" is a computer term where B is a child of A. So referring to the comic, A is the large present and B is the smaller present, and if you can remember back to a kid, you always wanted to open the big present first, so take away A and B, C, and however far it goes, dies because B can not exist without A in computer terms. And about the tree, I don't know

[surrealdreams]

The Christmas tree is a binary tree, a common data structure in programming. Each node on the tree can have 0, 1 or 2 "children" below it and one "parent" above it, with a special exception - the "root" node has no parent. The root is actually at the top, and there can only be one root.

[2muchfreetime8]

its a logic tree joke or something.
here's where i found out: http://www.explainxkcd.com/

[ERCCRE123]

The "tree" is a bunch of lights hung on the wall with "presents" hung underneath them.

[hintss]

what about last year's christmas xkcd?

[Kiteman]

This is fine, but I'd prefer to see an actual version on somebody's wall (before you ask, I have already been banned...)

[frenzy]

Yes, kiteman, we would LOVE to see this ;-)

actually if you do it, i'll send you a patch

[hintss]

I might. probably not, but I might...

[Kiteman]

As I said, I've already been banned - Kitewife said no.

[bowmaster]

Someone's a speed-builder!!! Good job.