Tag Archives: ampersand

Ampersand earring holder

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So literally since the day I first purchased the Glowforge, one of the projects on my list was to make a wall hanging to hold all of my super dangly earrings. In the past I had a simple holder of window screen in a picture frame, but pssh… I could make it so much cooler with a laser!

The idea I had in my head forever was a giant ampersand with holes in it for the earrings, but I could never really figure out how a good mechanism to hang it or even how to keep the earrings from completely camouflaging what the shape was. So after some googling I discovered an earring holder that had an art deco screen mounted on a wood tray, and thought, hey I could make a pattern with the ampersands! So I did:

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Thanks to another community member for the hook idea, I modified it a little but it definitely solved my problem of not wanting to have too complicated of a hanger system.

I found different colors of acrylic at a hardware store, so I used translucent white for the front and for the spacer ‘washers’, and frosted light blue for the back plate.

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I help you, Daddy! :heart_eyes:

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Fully loaded, and I love it :grinning:

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Hooray to the end of clutter! (And dust, haha).

Letter Fab-ulous

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Had some fun at the Tulsa Fab Lab this last week, making items to use for a fundraiser. I’m heading back to grad school to work on an MA Typeface Design at the University of Reading in the UK. Eeek, it’s expensive!

I made nearly 500 coasters (would have been more, but the laser had a temporary malfunction) out of clear acrylic and white acrylic.
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They look pretty cool when stacked! There isn’t any paint on these, unlike the HitchHiker’s Guide, because if the etched image is wide enough, it stands out just fine. Though I might still add paint to a few to change the color.
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Then while lasering another project onto wood, there was extra space so I shrank the coaster design down to an earring size. Waste not, want not! Can’t wait to wear them! I have eight pairs. I’m thinking about having a giveaway on this blog with a pair as the prize…
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I wish I had had time to design my own ampersand, but I really like this one from Charlemagne Standard. Laser-cut out of mirrored acrylic.
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Also on the mirrored acrylic, a lettered design of one of my favorite words by the amazingly talented PetitSerif. Positive and negative etches.
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This was my first time to seriously use the 3D printer. These below are cookie ‘stamps’. You press them into an unbaked sugar cookie to create the design. Printed with PLA filament on a Makerbot printer.
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The laser cutter and the 3D printer both can take a while to run a project. So in the meantime…I experimented with the vinyl cutter. It was my first experience ever ‘weeding’, or removing the background of one sticker before applying it to a base sticker. Super tricky and tedious, if your design is really detailed! But a really neat effect if you get it right.
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So many stickers! There is much weeding in my future…
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