Wooden Laser Cut Leaf Earrings

Created at the Laney College FabLab in Oakland, CA

On Adobe Illustrator, create outline of feather by placing a picture of the feather you want to trace onto your Illustrator artboard. From there, use the pen tool to trace the outside edges. For the earring hole, you might have to make the stem slightly wider. These will be your cut lines, and for the laser cutter, you should make the stroke color RGB red (red 255 green 0 blue 0), and at 0.001 width, which on Corel will read as "hairline."

From there, using the pen tool, add the interior lines. I used the variable width option on Illustrator to add some variation to these lines. Once you're done, make these lines RGB blue (red 0 green 0 blue 255).

Select, copy and paste the leaf illustration, and then use the object>transform>reflect option to turn the copied illustration around, so you'll basically have a pair of leaves that are mirror images of one another.

Save the file and open on the computer connected to your laser printer. The one at Laney's FabLab uses Corel Draw, so you can open the Illustrator file from Corel Draw and it should open up just fine.

You should see your images on the Corel file. Check to make sure that the red lines are RGB red and hairline width. Make sure that the blue lines are RGB blue.

Select "print" and go to "preferences," and choose the preferences for the material you will be printing on. Mines was wood > birch at .170". The click "apply" and ok. You will be directed back to the print dialog and from there press "ok."

Open up the print window which should and check to make sure all the lines are where they are supposed to be. If something is missing, then there's a chance either the lines aren't "hairline" width or the reds and blues aren't set all the way.

Click the green play button and watch in awe!