ISO : things to cut.

On a trip to Ohio about two months ago I wanted to take a gift for my sister (Mother's Day) and my dad (Father's Day) - I like to 'two birds / one stone'-it as much as possible and avoid shipping gifts home whenever I can.   I'm a big fan of the homemade gift, but know that not everyone wants a hand-drawn doodle or maraconi sculpture from their favorite 29-year old relative.

I found these beautiful hand-made cutting boards at a farmers' market with Matt for $10 each, and grabbed a few with the thought that I could do SOMETHING to them.  I had a wood-burner that I was borrowing / playing with, and we have a laser cutter at work that goes frequently un-used.   Both valid options for personalizing these cutting boards.... however, if there's a way to incorporate a craft project with anything Adobe, I'm there.

I drew-up some pretty simple designs in Illustrator, converted them to DWGs, tweaked them in AutoCAD and burned them into the cutting boards one night after work.  They turned-out beautiful, if I do say so - a couple different kinds of wood are used in the boards and they burn differently, which gives a really lovely tonal variety to the end result.  The folks who received these loved them almost as much as I did, and my hunt for more crafts with the laser cutter continues!