I just can’t seem to get enough of these edge-lit votive lights. The last ones I did didn’t get the urge out of me so I had to make more. This time it’s illusion lamps (coffee cup is to show scale):

I would like to say I designed the etchings but I’d be lying. I bought the files from 3Bee Studio. I figured it was worth it for only $1 per design. I am however trying to learn how to do it myself by taking the Lynda.com Blender class, and I think I’m getting close.

These are vector files and I had originally intended to just score them but for some of the really dense lined designs that didn’t work too well, especially at this small scale. Too much heat. So I selected all but the cut lines in Illustrator, pasted in Photoshop at 675 dpi, converted to pixels, saved as .png, and placed back in Illustrator and aligned with the cut lines. Engrave settings are here:

Bases were redesigned to use less material and were made from PG Draftboard with default cut settings.

One thing to keep in mind: if you get these files and decide to score, be aware that they contain many thousands of nodes. I went through the Path…Simplify command in Illustrator and got the node count down to a reasonable level.