We have a lot of trouble getting my five year old daughter to go to bed on time, so we added some positive incentive - if Oriana makes it to bed before 8:30pm, she gets a star. Five stars, she gets a new book. Right now, though, I record her star-count on my phone. I feel like she doesn’t really know how many stars she has at any given time, and I felt something a bit more visual would add some incentive.

So, this is my first project on the Glowforge:

This is engraved out of 1/4" HomeDepotGrade draft board. The overall design is pretty simple - I drew a bunch of ovals in Inkscape and combined them with “Union” to make the basic shape of the board. I created the stars with the polygon tool, and gave them a little bit of rounding (otherwise the points of the stars would probably get damaged over time). I engraved a 1/4" round circle in each star, and in five places on the board, and drove in some small rare earth magnets:

These magnets had sticky backs, but really they aren’t needed - they’re friction fit, and it took a hammer and a 1/4" dowel to drive them in. Finally, I took some old pants my daughter had worn through the knees on, and lased some cotton backs for each star:

These are glued on with a little 3M 77 spray adhesive, so the stars won’t mark up the finish on the board.