Today we're making some laser cut Christmas jewelry out of glitter acrylic.

We use our TrotecSpeedy 360 80w laser to cut and engrave as well as showing you some different techniques like heat bending the acrylic and inlaying. This is a great application for kids and for your next Christmas party!

POWER SETTINGS for all files:
Engrave: 55 power, 100 speed
Kiss-Cut: 20 power, 3 speed, air-assist on
Full-Cut: 100 power, 0.8 speed, air assist on

Artwork files attached!

Step 1: Bells Chain - Engrave and Cut

Our first and easiest chain was the silver "Merry Christmas" chain which was a simple engrave and cut. That's why we want to focus on the more complex ones starting with the "Bells" chain.

We start by placing our gold and dark red glitter acrylic into our laser machine.

We proceed to laser engrave our design on the red acrylic (which is RGB black fill in our artwork file).

Then the laser will kiss-cut, or score, the top of our acrylic using the RGB bluehairline outline. The kiss-cut is used so when know the position of our 2nd gold layer that we'll glue on top.

Finally the laser will full-cut around our shape on our red acrylic, and cut out our chain links and letters for our 2nd layer from the gold acrylic.

Step 2: Bells Chain - Assembly

Assemble together the chain links. Mind the 4 "S" hooks in the design/cut, those are to attach the medallion to the chain link.

Take off the 3M adhesive from the gold acrylic, and place them on the red acrylic medallion where we made our kiss cuts.

Step 3: Gingerbread Man Chain - Cut the Design

We're not engraving anything with this chain just cut our blue glitter acrylic with chain links and the medallion, and cut our pink glitter acrylic with the inlaying letters inside our medallion.

IMPORTANT: be sure to contour the inside lettering by 0.07" larger than the medallion for a tight fit. Since the laser beam takes away some material, if you simply cut the same design on both blue and pink the letters will just fall through. The design in the artwork files we've provided already have this contour so no need to worry, just if you're making adjustments or your own designs.

Step 4: Gingerbread Man Chain - Assembly

We first inlay our pink glitter acrylic letters into our blue medallion. Since they're a tight fit, we use our mallet to lightly hammer them in.

We then link our chain links together and to the medallion and you're done!

Step 5: Deer Chain - Engrave and Cut

For our final medallion placed our silver and gold glitter acrylic into our laser machine.
We proceed to laser engrave our design on the silver acrylic (which is RGB black fill in our artwork file).
Then the laser will kiss-cut, or score, the top of our acrylic using the RGB blue hairline outline.
The laser will full-cut around our shape on our silver acrylic, and cut out our chain links and letters for our 2nd layer from the gold acrylic.
Finally the laser will do a full cut on our gold chain links and our gold layers that will go on top of our medallion.

Step 6: Deer Chain - Assembly

We first take off our 3M adhesive from our gold letters and place them on our silver medallion (where we had our kiss-cuts).

We then pre-heat our acrylic heat bender (strip heater) for a few minutes. We place the medallion for 30 seconds. Once the acrylic is soft we bend the antlers to our desired shape and let them cool.

We then assemble the chain links and link them to our medallion.