Illustrator in the hands of a novice...

Hello and good evening. First an apology for the two name changes to the blog - something else I'm learning - so many fun and clever names for Art/Crafts/Illustration blogs...so many already used! So in the end - though I'm not promising anything - it is now name based.

Anyhow, back to the story of the jigsaw. Having really enjoyed the process of designing I then had to transfer the lines into vectors through Illustrator so that the laser cutter could read it (I had help with the small rose and bee design, so I was all on my own for this one). It took a day of frustration and much reference to the internet. So many great tutorials out there, but then you have to know exactly what you asking for...it took a while.

Redrawn on tracing paper.

In the end I ended up redrawing the sketch onto tracing paper, scanning then live tracing on Illustrator - I thought it was going really well until I noticed these loops. It was time to call on professional help.

A bit faint, but lots of extra loops that the laser
would follow if left in.

So two days after, at college I was lucky enough to find our great digital designer tutor Dom and ask for help. It took him a matter of moments to tell me what was wrong, how to put it right (easy, but time consuming) and that I should have gone to see him sooner!

FINALLY it was ready to go and I took it to the 3D technical department. The vector was fine, though an added layer of possible consideration was pointed out to me by Steve - a complicated design like this is also sending out a track line - and perhaps because it had been done by live trace the cuts were to be made in what looked more like a paint splatter then an Etchasketch and if the big shapes are cut out first and drop down, then when the laser comes to the small parts within the larger pieces they may not cut out and instead only etch....I set it off and waited. It is very exciting to see the machine working by itself, but cutting out a pattern you've been working on for many days.  

Voila! This time I was lucky and the laser cut things out just fine.