Week 1: Lasers, Leather, and Hand Painted Pins

This is a slightly awkward place to start blogging, as some progress builds on things that happened earlier. For example: at the very end of last year, I made my first Influencer deal. Kind of crazy! I received a laser cutter for free, in exchange for producing some content. I got the thing set up early in January, and ran a few tests with it. I had a great time exploring all the different functions and settings, and found it to be a very capable machine. I put together a quick design, converted it to a vector image, and ran some test cuts with greyboard before cutting a bunch of simple earrings from my favourite leather.

The laser cutter, for which you may have seen my unboxing video:

Testing the workspace mapping with complex polygons, cutting greyboard:

Using the workspace mapping to fit as many earrings as possible into an oddly shaped chunk of leather:

The resultant earrings in Dark Red Suave Lamb Nappa:

While I do love this leather, it's probably too thin for this sort of application. I'd be concerned about it curling over time. When I do get around to listing them in the store, they'll likely be quite cheap.

I had to put the laser experiments on hold for a while though - the smoke and the stink produced by cutting leather is POWERFUL. I ran the vent hose through the window, but it wasn't particularly effective. I kept all the windows open for ~36 hours, but it took another 3 days or so for the smell to fully dissipate.

I knew the company also produced an air filter kit, and asked if it was possible to expand the deal to include one. They didn't want to send me any more hardware, of course, until they'd seen how my content performed. So I told them I wasn't comfortable operating it in my flat, and asked if they'd accept returns. Three days later, they agreed to send me the air filter.

I did not expect such a beefy device.

 So I took the time to get that set up this week. I also contacted my leather supplier, and asked for some sample cuts of a few different varieties of leather, so that I could test their suitability for earrings. Using the polygon function for the workspace mapping, I was able to map and cut all five samples at the same time.

 I found that the Galaxy had a nice texture and colour, and offered good rigidity without being too thick or heavy.

 Unfortunately, I forgot to check the power settings before running the test, so I cooked the leather pretty hard, and it produced a lot of smoking and smearing. But the new air filter worked brilliantly, and the staining isn't an issue on these little tests.

Also late last year, I completed a couple of very fancy clamshell commissions, with custom painted eyes. Here's a very dramatically lit photo of the second clamshell case:

 Whenever I paint custom eyes for a job, I always make sure to paint more than I need; partially so that I can try different arrangements, and partially so that I have spares in case any of them get damaged during work. At the end of last week, I prepped a bunch of pins and bolo ties using the leftover eyes from all my recent custom commissions:

I had initially planned to do a few heart chomps too, but since I didn't have any hand-painted eyes in the appropriate size for them, I decided to exclude them from this drop.

This week I finished wrapping all of those:

 And I also bound the blocks for a couple of rainbow books:

 And planned the layout for the first book:

 I'm away for the second half of next week, so I expect I'll only be able to finish one book before then, and get everything photographed and uploaded to the store.

I haven't been as productive as I would have liked. I also had some life admin to take care of: my car insurance was due for renewal, and since I moved to Manchester, I've not used it enough to justify the cost. So I took some time to get it cleaned and prepped, and listed it for sale. It's the first and only car I've ever owned, and I thought I would be sad to see it go, but now that it's gone, the lack of responsibility for it is quite freeing. I'm looking forward to learning how to ride a bike instead!

Today I went into town to run some errands, and decided to try the Nappa leather earrings.

 I really love how they look, and they're so light that I barely felt them! I'll see how they hold up over time, but I'm very tempted to keep making them in this weight and offer them for sale alongside the sturdier version.

Finally, while I was out, I popped into a second-hand clothing store and checked out the jackets. I wasn't particularly inspired by any of the leather offerings, but I did find a decent quality denim jacket in very good condition.

I have several ideas for how to mod it in my style - maybe some monstrous laser cut leather lace? Or, I've been wanting to try making toothy flowers for a while, so maybe I could make some 3D accents for it. Or tentacles! I'm not sure yet. If this goes well, I'll probably make several, so I can try them all out! Very, very excited to experiment. But I think first I need to get myself a dressmaker's mannequin so that I have something to support it while I build onto it.