heart Archives - LaserSister

Posted on 20 January 202520 January 2025 by LaserSister — Leave a comment

Filigree Valentine Heart Woodcut

Following on from yesterday’s papercut Valentine heart design, I have now cut the same design, to get a filigree Valentine heart woodcut:

Here is a YouTube video of me cutting it with the laser machine (an Epilog Fusion Edge).

I’m really pleased with how these look – either as papercuts or from wood, and at small or large scale.

In fact, I’m so pleased with the design that I’m going to put it for sale on my shop. Woohoo! Or rather, Woo Commerce!

While cutting this I was listening to the audiobook of Joanna Penn’s newly-released “How to Write Non-Fiction” (second edition). There are a LOT of useful tips in there, which I will hopefully be putting into practice later this year. I am feeling very creative at the moment, and so 2025 seems like I might be able to plan ahead far enough to actually start achieving some goals.

I’ve got loads of projects and designs that I’m working on, so I hope they all turn out as well as this design. This is what the filigree hearts look like when they’ve been cut out and are hanging up on a wall:

Do you like the design? Could I improve it? Let me know in the comments below!

Posted on 1 November 202016 July 2022 by LaserSister — Leave a comment

Lockdown Papercutting Project Day 44: Moustache Heart Filigree

papercut 711 moustache heart filigree - horizontal - LaserSister - KayVincent

Moustache Heart Filigree #711

“Moustache Heart Filigree” is the latest design from the ongoing papercutting project that I’ve been doing. (Basically I’m trying to work my way through all of the designs in the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book by Dover Books.)

This design is number 711 in the book. It’s ended up with one of the more unusual names for a design (and blog post title), because I couldn’t think how else to describe it. But as I write this post (as opposed to when I originally cut the piece) it is now November, which in recent years has become “Movember“. (Movember’s aim is to raise awareness about men’s health issues, including mental health issues.)

…and this design just happens to have what looks like a big Victorian-type waxed moustache in the middle of a heart. So why not just “say what I see”, and call the design “Moustache Heart Filigree”? Plus for all I know, those three words have never been put together in that order in the history of the English Language, so I feel like quite the pioneer 🙂

papercut 711 moustache heart filigree - vertical pinterest - LaserSister - KayVincent

Closer up:

This was a challenging design to cut, and so I really enjoyed it.

I can’t immediately think of an occasion when I might use this particular design in a project. But never mind – it can still go into my sketchbook for me to look at later.

I’m still listening to the Servant of the Crown audiobook that I mentioned yesterday. I’m always on the hunt for great fantasy novels (or even good ones), but so far this one isn’t even a fantasy book. It’s mentioned a mage a couple of times, but that’s as close as it’s got to any magic. Remind me to put some magic in my fantasy book when I eventually get round to writing it…

Any comments? You can chip in via the comments page, or Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram.

Posted on 11 October 201817 July 2022 by LaserSister — Leave a comment

Laser-Cut Filigree Heart Wedding Card

wedding card - andrea and dom - Kay Vincent - LaserSister

New Design: Laser-Cut Filigree Heart Wedding Card

Congratulations to my cousin Andrea! She got married last weekend to Dominic, so I made a laser-cut card for them:

wedding card 2 - andrea and dom - Kay Vincent - LaserSister

wedding card 3 - andrea and dom - Kay Vincent - LaserSister

I found the basic leafy design on Vectorstock.com (and here it is on Pinterest) and then tweaked it until it was heart-shaped.

Posted on 10 September 201716 July 2022 by LaserSister — Leave a comment

Free Sample Day!

Laser-cut wedding confetti samples - Kay Vincent LaserSister

Last week at Autumn Fair I got some really nice comments about my wedding-related personalised items, so today I am going to a wedding fair in Worthing to see if anyone there would like some free samples.

I still haven’t seen anyone else yet who makes laser-cut personalised confetti, so I hope I’m offering a useful service 🙂

Posted on 7 March 201716 July 2022 by LaserSister — Leave a comment

Creating a logo for my new business

Since I’m more or less starting from scratch, I needed a logo for my new business. How do I create a logo? I could have asked for help, maybe from a logo designer on fiverr.com, but that costs money, and I am trying for a ‘lean’ startup.

I’m also happy with the thought that as my business evolves, my logo will need to evolve along with it, so I don’t need to be stuck with the same logo forever if I decide I hate it, or it’s not professional enough, or it no longer reflects the ideas I originally had.

Therefore I’ll be happy as long as it

gives at least a suggestion of what the business is about,
doesn’t make me cringe to look at it, and
can be scaled up or down without going all pixel-y and blobby.

So, how to create the image?

Use graphics software that can create different formats of image, like scalable vector graphics (.svg), and .gif files. I already happen to have CorelDRAW, but a quick search showed me that there are cheaper (or free) alternatives, like these).

Do a Google image search for keywords in your business name, or key themes of the business. I wanted something for “LaserSister”, so first of all I searched for “laser”:

…I noticed that a lot of the images had a straight line and/or a bursting ‘zap’ image, so I started to copy and paste these into a separate document, as reminders of the type of image I was looking for (I could also have done this on Pinterest):

I also did a search for images that represented “sister”. A load of pink images came up (and I hate pink), so I discounted them. Lots of female symbols and female toilet symbols also appeared, but that wasn’t really me either…

…but one thing that did come up was a heart, which seemed like a fairly positive image, so in the drawing software I made a ‘zap’ image and a heart, put one on top of the other, and suddenly I had a logo:

laser sister zap-heart logo

Then I exported it as a .jpg file so I could use it on my website.

Yes, I could have got a better logo if I’d gone to a professional – but like I said, I know that the business will continue to evolve, so when the time comes I will change my logo, but for now I like having a free one that I created myself. 🙂

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