Which holiday is it? Valentine’s Day? Easter? I’m so confused.

I was etching valentine candy hearts earlier.  Then a fellow laserist gave me a dozen raw eggs he was done etching and I played in the open spaces.

I tried to put my face on them but it didn’t come out so well.  (I’m sure the crack was there beforehand!)  Out of 6 tries, this was the best.

So I reverted back to simple text (above).

What to say on an egg …

For the curious, I first tried setting the egg on a little round indentation of acrylic but the indentation didn’t keep the egg from rocking back and forth as the laser moved quickly so closely above it.  Of course I’ll have to investigate this later for inspiring specifically laser-blurry printing options.  But for now I wanted to recognize my face.

So I arranged small heavy pieces of steel right up against the egg and that worked.  I also brought the speed way down (as well as the power) which I think helped as well.

My fellow laserist used the egg carton as a jig.  That’s usually fine if the carton material is safe to get hit with the laser (some materials like this will flash fire.)

His etchings looked better than mine.  But since I started out close to his parameters, I suspect, as has been the case before, that my artwork needed to be modified.  But by the time I’d done enough samples to conclude that, I was out of white spaces.