Transcripts
1. Hello!: If you're a surface
pattern designer or digital artists and have never created files
for laser cutting. You are sitting on and gold. Hi, I'm Liz Olson, I'm a graphic designer and
one of the top sellers on Etsy or SVG laser files. So SVG simply stands for
scalable vector graphic. And in this class, I'm
going to teach you how with just a few edits, you can turn your already
vectorized artwork into SVG files to sell online. I'll show you how to deconstruct a simple surface pattern and use pieces from that
design to create several different
laser in files. By the end of this class, you will have three
unique SVG files and all the tools you need to start selling
them right away. You don't have to
learn a new program and you don't have to
buy a fancy machines. All you need is some basic
Adobe Illustrator experience and your own vectorized
pattern or design. Laser machines
have become really popular and a lot of
laser owners don't have the time or desire to learn design software and prefer to
just by SVG files instead. So that's where we come in. If you already have a library
of vectorized artwork, you have 90% of the work done. I am so convinced that if
you're willing to spend an afternoon learning and implementing the techniques
from this class, you're gonna be able to create so many good files in a
short amount of time. If you're already
selling products like fabric or print-on-demand items, you have a built-in
customer base that would love to buy coordinating laser and items
with your artwork. As a designer, I know
how overwhelming it can feel to try to make ends
meet with artwork sales. But for me, laser filed has
made all the difference. In just over two years, I've brought in nearly $150,000
from file sales alone. And that's still
feels crazy to say because when I
first got started, I didn't have any previous
Illustrator experience. And I was brand new to lasering. So you don't need to be
an expert designer or really have any idea how
lasers work at this point. Because I'm going to share the tips and tricks that have led to my success and all the
basics of lasering, which will save you
months of learning time. We need more good designers
and the laser world. And I can't wait to show
you how to get started.
2. Your Project: One of the main reasons I
love laser designing is that it's the opportunity to combine both form and function. So I can take one piece
of artwork and apply it to an endless amount
of functional designs. And I'm really only limited
to what I can dream up. In this class, we'll be
focusing on combining your art with three different
types of sign backers. Wooden signs are one of the most simple yet
best-selling laser designs. All you need to do is apply your artwork to a shape and then customers can add names or text to personalize it
however they'd like. For your class project, you'll create three
different sign backer files based on the three actions
of laser machines. The first is cutting. Your first SVG file will be a sign that
features only cutting. Cutting is the main function of laser machines and it's
where the laser head follows a path to cut through thin materials like
wood and acrylic. Lasers don't usually cut through material thicker
than a quarter-inch, but materials can be layered and glue to create a
little bit more depth. The second action is engraving. Your second file will be around sign backer with an
engraved pattern. Engraving is where the laser
head moves side-to-side between two pads to burn
away a layer of material. The third action you'll
create for is scoring, your last file will be a pennant shape sign
with a score design. Scoring is where the laser
follows a single path to make a shallow cut that
creates a thin line design. Scoring is the fastest way to make designs
on your material, but it's also the
least versatile because the width of
the line never changes. To demonstrate the techniques
and these lessons, I'll be using the
Adobe Illustrator file I use to create this fabric. You'll be using elements from your own designs to create
similar types of signs. So obviously your end result is going to look a little
bit different than mine. But I've also
included my file so you can practice along
with me if you'd like. You can find links to all
the free downloads for this class under the project
resources tab below, and I'd love to see your progress. Feel free to upload
screenshots of your work for
feedback or review. Alright, let's jump
into our first lesson.
3. Workspace Setup: Alright, welcome to
our very first lesson. We're gonna get our workspace totally set up in
Adobe Illustrator and then talk about
what colors and layers mean for laser designing. This documents
available to download. So you're welcome to open it in Illustrator and
work along with me. The first thing we're
gonna do is make sure our artboard size is
set to 19 " by 10.5 ". That's because this is the size of a Glowforge laser bed. So I just know as I'm designing, I want everything to fit
within these boundaries. And then it will
be able to be cut out on one piece of material. The next thing I like to
make sure is that my grid is showing because I work so
much with fill and stroke. I just feel like it makes it
so much easier for me to see what I'm working with when the background
grid is turned on. So to do that, go up
to view, scroll down. It'll say hide grid or
show grid right here. This is just
personal preference. You don't have to do that, but
for me it makes it easier. The next thing I like to
do is make sure all of the tools I need for designing are on this right-hand side. So if you go up to window, we're going to go to
Workspace and Essentials. There we go. So what this does is it
will bring pretty much all the tools you'll need for designing right here on
this right-hand side. Okay, The next thing we're
gonna do is pick our colors. So how Glowforge works is
when you upload a file, the laser software will
notice what color things are, and then group all of the
same colors together. And then you can
select an action to do with that color group. So for instance, if I uploaded a file that had all of
these three colors in it, it would group everything
black together. And for me, Black
always means cut. So then I would select
cut for that action. Then it would group
all the purple and I would select engrave, and it will group all of the
teal and I'll select Score. Glowforge software
is a little bit unique in that it
groups actions by color because most other lasers are going to group
actions by layer. But Glowforge doesn't care
at all about layers. So I'll actually be showing
you how to do both in your files will make sure all the colors are
grouped correctly. And we'll also do things
that are going to make it easier for people used
to working in layers. So now it's time to
pick your colors. You are welcome to pick the
same colors if you'd like. This is just what I got started with and it's worked for me. I kinda wish I'd
pick more brands, specific colors, but
we're just going with it. So whatever colors you pick, go ahead and change
these swatches now. And then we're going to
highlight them and go down here and click this folder. And new color group, we'll call this lasers. And then that will just put
all of your swatches down here just to make it really
easy as we're designing. Now that we have our workspace totally set up, in
our next lesson, we're going to
start to talk about the difference between Fill and Stroke and what that has to do with
designing for lasers.
4. The Basics: Fill and Stroke: In this lesson, we're going to talk about the
difference between Fill and Stroke and what that
means for laser designing, this may feel a little bit
heavy on the technical side, but once you're familiar with the techniques
from the lesson, you're gonna be ready to start
creating your own files. So don't worry about having to totally master the
concepts before moving on. I'm going to cover everything in more depth in later lessons. Let's jump in. We're gonna be using the same
document as less than one. So go ahead and pull
that up if you'd like, and we'll get started. So let's take a look
at these two flowers. They look the same, right? But when we highlight them, we're going to see
they're actually created very differently. On the left you'll see we have a double stroke with a fill. And over here we have a
single stroke with no fill. When laser software sees a fill, it's going to want
to engrave it. So anything between
these two strokes, the laser head is
going to move back and forth to burn off. When the laser software
sees a stroke, it will want to cut or score it. So paying attention to fill and stroke is going to be really important as we move into
deconstructing your artwork. Because how your
elements are created, whether that's mostly
with fill or a stroke, it will really influence how your customers are able
to use your files. So some artwork is
going to be best for engraving and other artwork is going to be best for
scoring or cutting. So let's take a look down
at the bottom of this file. We have five different
floral elements here. We're going to
take a look at how they've been created and then what each is going to look like after it's been
printed with a laser. First, we have this
single stroke file. So you'll see here
there's no fill, it has just a single
stroke and the laser is going to want to read that
as cutting or scoring. But because it's black, you'll remember for me, black is always
going to mean cut. All know that this
is meant to be cut. Here's what that
first element looks like after it's been
cut by my laser. This is maple plywood and even see there's no
other designs on here. The shape has simply been cut
out and the edges are dark because they've
literally been burned by the laser as the shape
is being cut out. Okay, let's take a look
at this second element. So this flower has a
black line around it, which means it's gonna be cut. But it also has
this purple fill. There are two strokes here. As you can see, the strokes
don't have a color. And in-between the
strokes is a purple fill. So when the laser sees this, it's going to want
to engrave it. So the laser head will move
back and forth between these two strokes to burn
off the layer of material. Here's what the
second element looks like after being
cut and engraved. You can see here the laser
head has moved back and forth between the two strokes to burn away that section of material. Something that's different
than the first flower though is the center of the
flower was not cut out. If I had wanted to do that, I would need to
add a black stroke to that part of the file. The third flower here is
another engraving example. So we have a black
cutting stroke again, and then we also have
this large fill section. So you'll notice here, even though they're kind
of hard to see, there are two strokes. There's the stroke on
the edge of the flower and then there's the
stroke in the center. So the laser is going to engrave everything that's
between those two strokes, which will be all of
this purple space. Here's a third flower after
it's been cut and engraved, you'll see all of this dark space is where
the laser head has moved back-and-forth to burn off
that entire layer of material. So looking at our
fourth element, we again have the black cut out, but we also have this
teal stroke here. For me, Teal always
means the scoring. Okay, here's that fourth flower cut out with a scored outline. Scoring is just a shallow cut
where the laser moves along a path instead of moving
side-to-side between the paths. Now as a side note, let's just say you
have the scoring file, but you would rather engrave it. There's a couple of
options for you here. So first, what we could do is select this one and the center. And we're gonna go
up to Object Expand. Once we expand, you'll notice instead of
just a single stroke, now, we have two
strokes with a fill. So the laser is going to read
this as an engraving file. So we'll go back here. Another thing you can do here, these two strokes
aren't connected yet, so I'm going to select both of them and click Command eight, which will create
a compound path. Then we're gonna go ahead and simply swap the fill and stroke. And you'll see here that now we have this exact file just
in a different color. So I share this just
to show that you are rarely stuck with
one type of file. Changing the fill and the
stroke is going to give you a lot of flexibility
with your designs. And finally, here is
our fifth element. We have this black
cutting stroke again, and then we have these two
teal strokes without a fill. So the laser is going to see teal, and I will tell it to score. Now, you'll notice
that this file is actually the same as
the second flower. If we just swap the
fill and stroke, then all of a sudden we
have the same thing. Because I've assigned
teal to these strokes. I'll just know that
when I go to print that this is meant to be scored. So here's our last flower
with a double stroke. The laser didn't engrave between the two strokes because I
told it to score instead. These types of files remind
me a lot of coloring books. And a lot of designers will
actually do this on purpose. So it will leave space for
painting between the lines. The last thing I want to
mention is the time difference between printing all of these
different types of flowers. So engraving is gonna be a
lot more common than scoring. But it takes at least
three times longer to engrave these flowers than
it does to score them. So as we move on to
deconstructing your artwork, just keep in mind if you have a lot of engraving elements, it may take longer to print out, then some laser owners
are willing to spend. Scoring is much faster,
but in general, it's harder to make
scoring files look as professional or finished
as the engraving versions. Cutting engraving and scoring. They all have their
pros and cons. And in the upcoming lessons, we're going to take
a deeper dive into how to design for
each of these actions
5. Deconstruct Your Art: Welcome to lesson three. We're gonna get started on deconstructing your
pattern or design. I'll be working with
my floral pattern here and you're welcome to download
it and work along with me. But now it'd be the time to pick your own piece of art
to begin working with. I suggest trying
to pull in a piece of artwork that's
not too complicated. You can see mine here is really just a single floral element that's been repeated
and rotated. So if you have a file that's
kind of similar to this, That's what I'd recommend
getting started with. It doesn't have to be a pattern. It could simply be a single
element or a landscape, or maybe group of designs. It can be really whatever
you want it to be, but it does need to be
vectorized already. I won't be explaining how
to do that in this class, but there are a lot of
great resources out there. If you only have rasterized art that still needs to be
converted two vectors. The first thing we're
gonna do is to check and see if your art
has a background. So mine obviously does. I'm going to select
that and delete it. I'll also delete this
swatch over here. This is just what my pattern
looks like repeated, but we do not need that. So at this stage, I would recommend highlighting
everything and then changing your fill to
none and stroke to black. This way we can kinda get a feel for what the different elements look like and how we'll be able to use them in laser designing. If you zoom in here, we'll see that these
little flowers are all single stroke design. So there's not a
fill currently. And I can tell just by looking
at this that it's going to be a good cutting
or scoring element. Now I could go ahead and
swap the fill and stroke. Use the shape builder
tool to create this, which would be a good
and grieving element. But we'll just
change it back here. So right now, go
ahead and pick out as many elements from
your design as you can and set them
off to the side. So really anything
that you see in your own artwork that is different or you think could
be used in a laser pattern. Let's go ahead and make a group of them over here on the right. So I really just have
this one element here. And what I'm gonna do
now is copy my pattern and all the elements
onto a new document. This is going to turn into
our source file so that in any future lessons or
any future designing, and just pull this file up so you'll have everything
you'll need to work with. We're going to save this as an Illustrator file
and I'm going to call it Daisy pattern source. And go ahead and save that
here as an Illustrator file. And then we can
close this file out. And really that's all there
is to deconstruction. We just wanted to see what we could pull out
from our piece of art and kind of start
to get everything organized before we jump
into making our files. In the next lesson, we're going to learn about cutting and how to design specifically
for cutting files
6. Laser Cutting: We're gonna get ready to create our very first laser file. For this lesson,
we're going to focus primarily on cutting and how we would create a sign using
only cutting actions. Go ahead and copy the elements that we created in
the last lesson. Then we're going
to check and see if any of the
elements you pulled out would work well for
a sign backer shape. For me, I feel like if
I were to make this larger and then
delete the center, this shape right here would
work well as a sign backer, I could put text on top. I could do a couple of
different things to it. But I think the shape is
going to work well as a base. There's a chance you don't have a shape that
would work well for the backer sign or
for cutting in general. And that's okay. Some artwork is really only best for engraving or scoring. But here are two ways
that I would edit your elements to make
them work for cutting, Let's say a lot of your elements
actually look like this, where there's not
a single stroke, it's a double stroke. So this is not going
to work great for a sign backer
because the laser, when it goes to cut out
this double stroke, It's going to
essentially only leave you with whatever is black. So the center is not gonna
be connected to anything, so that would just float around. So even if we took that out, what we're left with now
is not much of a backer. It's pretty flimsy because
there's no centerpiece. So something you
could do if you have primarily elements that would
work well for engravings. So with this fill is go
ahead and swap the fill and stroke and then choose
one of these to delete. So I think I'm gonna get rid of the thinner inside stroke. Then. Now an element that would have worked
well for engraving, can also work for
cutting or scoring. So let's go ahead and turn this shape right
here into a backer. Essentially, it's
already ready to go. But I want to show you
what this is going to look like with text on it. So I'm going to create
a text box here and I'm going to use Clara,
one of my nieces names. So when you use text
for your files, just make sure you have a font that includes
commercial use. So this one's called Amsterdam. And once you have
what you want typed, go ahead and click
Create Outlines. This is going to turn
it into a vector. So there's one other
step you need to take, and I want to show that a
little bit more clearly here. So when you turn
text into outlines, it is often going to
have overlapping fills. What a laser does when it sees an overlapping fill
is to ignore it. So if we were engraving here, the laser would go
back-and-forth and back-and-forth until it
reached this overlap. And then it would skip
it and keep going. Especially if you're
going to engrave, you need to make
sure you unite it. After you create outlines, go ahead and unite the paths. And now if I swap
the fill and stroke, this is going to be all
cut out with a laser and I'm gonna be left with
just the name outline. I'm going to put that on
top of my sign backer here. And I'm going to
just play around and rotate it until I am happy. So often, I like to have the
text spill across the edges. But for this one, I'm going to have
the text inside. I feel like that is spaced. Well, I'm happy with it. I'm gonna go ahead and give
you a little preview of what this would look
like as an actual sign. So over here, I would print the back or
out on a piece of wood and then probably use acrylic or a different colored
material for the name and just glue these
two pieces together. Okay, So what should
we do if you only have elements that aren't
going to work well as a backer shape. So one of the options we
have here is to create a sign like this by combining your shapes
with another shape, a circle, or a rectangle. You can see here that
we're actually layered. So we have two layers going on. We have this flower shape
and then the backer piece. What this looks like in a finished product is
something like this. I would cut the backer
piece out of wood and then maybe do a white
acrylic flower and just glue all of these on top. So let's walk through
how I actually would go about creating
a sign like this. The first thing we're
gonna do is make a circle. And I like to start with 5 ". I feel like that's a
good starting size. And then back or signs
are usually between five and 10.5 " depending on whether they're
gonna be used for it. I'm just going to drag
some of my flowers onto the circle and make
them different sizes. So we'll do this
a little smaller. And then we'll do one more
and just drag it down here. Alright, so now that we
have our elements placed, we're gonna go ahead and
highlight everything, copy it, and then Command
B to paste in back Now don't click off anything and go to Pathfinder
and click Unite. Then come back here and delete the top circle that we
don't need anymore. And now you'll see we've just created the sign backer with the shape of the flower on
it so that we can easily glue the two elements together. So I'm gonna go ahead and
put a little name on here, make it the size I want. I think that is looking nice. So before we go to
save this sign, you don't want to
save anything that has overlapped elements on it. So these flowers need to
be cut out separately. So we're going to
drag them to the side and do the same with the name. Now, if we left
the name here and sent this to the laser software, it would go ahead and cut the name out of the
sign back or material. Sometimes that works,
but in this case, what it would end up doing is
cutting the name out here. But because there's
this center line, It's also going to
cut this piece out. So essentially, your final product is
gonna look like that. And this one would
look like that. So sometimes it works, but it's not usually
a good look. So another thing to mention here is you're probably
not going to include this name with
your file that you sell because that's just
incredibly specific. And then people are going to ask for all sorts
of other names. Anyway, you just want
to show an example of what someone could create
with your backer file. So I would send this to a
tester with the name included, and I would create a mock-up
with a name included. But for your final
file that you sell, I would not include a name. Now you could do some
generic word like love or something that would fit
with the design elements. And then I would go ahead and include
that with your file. But if you do any sort of
personalizing like names, go ahead and delete that
when you're ready to sell. Okay, let's go ahead and save
this now as an SVG file. I'm going to select
it all and then copy onto a new document. Just as a final check, we're gonna make
sure that nothing is overlapping so that it can
all be cut out separately. And then the next final
thing we want to do, even though there are not a
ton of elements going on, I'm gonna make sure
I select every one of these flowers and
hit Command eight. Then we're going to look
at our Layers panel. We'll do the same here just
in case we go to Layers. And then that just
simplified everything here. So somebody who's used to
working in layers can then select our entire shape and change the color
if they need to, or just do any edits that make
it really quick and easy. Okay, we are ready to save, so I'm gonna hit Command S and we want to save
as an SVG file. And I'm going to call
this round Daisy sign. Alright, we're going
to click Save and then you will see
a text box here. And there are two things
to pay attention to. First, you want to make sure your decimal places
or four or higher. Then see about
responsiveness down here, you want to make sure
it is unchecked. Because when someone loads this file into
their own software, we don't want that
software to be responsive and change
the size of the file. So click Okay, and we've
just saved our first file. There it is, it is ready
to send off to a tester. Or we could delete the name and that will be ready
to upload to sell. In our next lesson, we're
going to talk through how to design primarily
for engraving
7. Laser Engraving : This lesson is gonna be focused
on engraving and how to create a sign backer with
primarily engraved elements. So the first thing to do is copy and paste that source
document we created earlier into a new document and it take a look at the elements
you've pulled out of it. Do any of those strike you as
good in grieving elements. For me, when I look here, this flower has a
single stroke and in its current form is best for cutting or scoring,
not engraving. But I've got some options. So the first thing I
could do is expanded. So Object, Expand. Then this would give me a fill. So right now this flower would
work well for engraving. The other thing I
could do to it is go ahead and swap the
fill and stroke. Use the shape builder tool
and remove the center. Now, this is also a good
element for engraving. So go ahead and pull aside all the elements
that are going to work well for engraving, we're going to create an
all-around pattern backer. So using one element or a
group of your elements, go ahead and create a similar sized all over pattern for me. I'm gonna go ahead and
copy and paste this down here so that I can make
edits to it all at once. I'm going to start by
expanding this whole thing. And that was very easy. So now these are gonna be
all good for engraving. Then the next process
is going to be a little bit more tedious to
create that filled shape, but I'm gonna give it a
go and let you watch. Alright, now we have our
second group that is going to work well
for engraving. So now I'm going to create our five-inch backers
circle shape. We're gonna give it no fill. And then because
we want it to cut, it will have a stroke of black. Alright, so I'm going
to drag a copy of that over to this first group. I kinda wanna make this smaller. So I'm going to
de-select the circle and make this pattern
a little tinier. I'm going to place it how I
like within the circle and then just manually move
the flowers around. Okay, I think I'm happy
with how that looks and I can always go back and
do a few more edits. So there are two primary
ways that I would use to crop these shapes
inside the circle. The first is going to be
using the shape builder tool. Again. Highlight everything. Click the shape builder tool
and go in and just manually. Take out. Here we go. These
shapes that overlap. So this works well. If you have just a few
shapes that are overlapping, your other shapes for
something like this, it's a little bit more tedious. So I'm going to
just stop here and show you you could continue
to do that all around. But it's going to
take some time. So the second way that
I would use to do this, I'm gonna go ahead and copy
this and paste in back. Then, select everything but de-select both of
these circles here. But then hitting Shift, I'm going to select
just the top circle. And I'm gonna go over to the Pathfinder tools and
use this crop function. So what that did was just take care of all of
those flowers for us. There's just one circle
on the outside here. And this is ready to go. Now, moving over to these
other purple flowers here, we're gonna do the same things. So I am going to make this pattern just
a little bit smaller, but not as small
as the other one. And I think I'm happy with
those overlapping flowers. I think we'll move
him in a little bit. Okay. So again, you can go in with the shape builder tool and
do that exact same thing. There's only a few that
are crossing over here. So actually, that is
probably what I would use. Okay, that was pretty fast. I think that for this circle, that was probably
the best method, but you could go ahead and do the other way if you prefer. Alright, now that we have two options for
engraved sign backers, we're going to talk
about adding text. So you could do the
same thing as in the cutting lesson
where we add a text. I'm going to use Margaret
and change the font here. But create outlines
and then unite. So I'm just going to
bring this text up here. We could use this
to cut out again, or we could engrave this
name directly onto the sign. So in order to do that, we're going to need to
change the fill to purple. And then remember
how overlapping paths the laser just doesn't
know what to do with. We're going to need to
go in here and unite these specific flowers that are overlapping with the name. So I'm just going to make
sure everything's ungrouped here just so we can select
individual flowers. Okay, I think
that's ready to go. So I'm going to select all the flowers that touch
the name in any way. Okay, I think that's it. And then I'm going
to select the name as well and click Unite. So what this has done is gotten rid of anything
that overlaps. So now when the laser
goes to engrave this, it will engrave
everything correctly. Now for a sign like this, because these flowers will have so much engraving on them. I probably would just cut out a name or a phrase
to put on top. I think that the name
might get lost between the flowers if we did
it on this version. Now let's go ahead and
save these two files. What I'm gonna do, I
should have made a copy, it's put the name on, but
we're just gonna go back here. We don't want to save that
file with the name welded in because then our customers won't be able to use that well. So we're going to
select everything and I'll keep the name
in this file for now, copy it onto a new document, and then go ahead and
save as an SVG file. We'll call this Light Daisy. And we have four decimal places. Responsive is unchecked,
and that's ready to go. Alright, so we have covered the basics of
engraving for signs. In our next lesson, we're
going to talk about how to score and use that to
create other sign backers.
8. Laser Scoring : Alright, in this
lesson we're going to talk about scoring and how to create sign backers that have a lot of scoring elements. So the first thing to do is copy and paste your
source file into a new document and take
a look at your elements. Do you have a good
scoring elements? For me, this one is great because it is a
single stroke design. There is no fill. But you might notice that a lot of your elements do have a fill. So this one, I'm actually
edited so that it has a fill. So when you have
a filled element, there are a couple
of ways that you could turn this into
a scoring file. The first thing is just to
swap the fill and stroke. Now this is small,
so I'm going to turn the stroke down
so we can see it. Right now. This has just been
turned into a scoring file. So the laser will score these double lines and your end result will
look like this. Another way to turn this into a scoring file is with
these lines showing here. Just pick one to delete. So with the direct select tool, I'm going to delete
the outer shape. So that works well now for
scoring because there's no fill and it's just
this single line. Now there's a third option that's a little
bit more tedious, but sometimes it just doesn't work well to
delete the stroke, you lose part of the shape. It's just not great. So another way you could
turn this element into a scoring design
would be to trace it. So in order to do this, I like to use the
curvature tool. And actually before
we select that, we're going to lock this in
place by hitting command two. And then I'm going to
select the curvature tool and make it teal because
that is my scoring color, but it needs a teal
stroke, not fill. Okay, so it's a little tedious, but you can go ahead and zoom in and color essentially
between the lines. So you could use the pen tool. There's a couple of
other tools that are going to give you
a single stroke. But I've just always used the curvature tool
and really enjoy it. All right, now that I
have everything traced, I like to pull it off of the shape so that I can make
any adjustments as needed. There's usually a few
tweaks here and there, just smoothing out some edges. You can really just
play around with it. Sometimes. Sometimes you can get stuck
playing around with things. So I have to remind myself, It's okay if it's not
perfect, just move on. Alright, I think I'm pretty
happy with this flower shape. So I'm going to group
these two together, actually hitting Command eight to turn them into
a compound path. So here we have the flower
that we just traced and have created a scoring file
from an engraving file. Alright, so now that
hopefully you have some elements you
could use for scoring, we're gonna go ahead and
create this backer sign. I have the shape available to download if you'd
like to use it. And we're going to
create an all over pattern with our
scoring elements. So I'm going to
just drag this over here and make it a little
bit larger actually. Now I'm going to fill
in this sign here just until I'm happy
with how it looks. All right. There's one
crucial thing I forgot to do, which was change
the color to teal. So I'm going to
highlight all of this and change these here to teal. We don't need a fill. Alright? So similarly to engraving, there are a couple of
ways to go about taking off the shapes that fall
outside of our backer sign. So selecting everything,
we can go in with the shape builder tool and
hitting option for negative, just come around and delete
all of the excess flower. This works great if, especially if you have designs with just a few
overlapping shapes. But again, you could go around this whole outer edge and just
delete all those flowers. Now the second way is
similar to engraving, but it only works
if you don't have additional designs
on your art board. We're going to copy and paste this design into a new document. And before we do anything else, go ahead and click the shape
of the pennant and copy it. We're not going to
paste it anywhere yet. But go ahead and
create any other shape that totally surrounds
everything on the art board. Now we're going to select
both the pennant and the extra shape and click Command eight to make
a compound path. Then we'll swap the fill
and the stroke color. So now you can see the shape of what our end product
is going to be. Now we're going to select
everything and go to the Pathfinder tools
and click Outline. So what we're left with is a very strange looking results. But what happened is that
now everything outside of our pennant shape is a different color than
what's inside it. Using Direct Select, click any of the outside
shapes and come up here to select same Stroke
Color, and then hit Delete. So now it looks like
nothing is left but our pennant flowers
are actually there. We just need to give them
back their stroke color. So before doing anything else, we're going to paste
the pennant shape we copied back in place. So hit Command Shift V. Now we have our completed
design and we can copy this back onto our
original art board. So that way is a little bit
more complicated at first. But it really can save time once you're used
to doing those steps, it'll go pretty quickly. Let's talk about the
two ways that I would use scored text in a design. And the first way is
going to be as a guide or template for words that
you would glue on top. In this case, I have this hello lovely
phrase that's gonna be glued on top of the sign backer. And it is just so hard to place words with the right spacing
and get them all straight. So in order to just help
your customers out, I would suggest including the scored outline of these letters so that
when they go to glue, it's just gonna
be really easy to know exactly where
to place everything. Now this is a level
two steps to take, but what I would actually do in this case is select both of these and assign
them a fourth color. So the reason for this is when you go to upload
this to Glowforge, there's the three
actions you can click, Cut, engrave, or score, but there's actually
a fourth option that Glowforge gives you and
that is to ignore a step. So let's say your customer
loves the sign backer, but they have a different idea of what text they
want to put on top. You don't want them to
be stuck with having to print everything out
exactly like you show, because it's a different color, they will have the option to ignore this step when
they go to print. If these letters were teal, the same color as the flowers. When they go to upload
this to Glowforge. And if they clicked ignore
on these letters steps, it would also ignore all the flowers as well because
they're the same color. So this is just adding
a step for you, but it will give your customers a lot more vitality and how
they can use this file. The second way I
would use text is actually in the final design. When you vectorize text, you are always gonna be left
with this double stroke. Look, in this case, I think our final
design is gonna be pretty balanced because we also have these single
stroke flower elements. So a stroke is going to be
a little bit darker and a lot more thin than
most engraved elements. So when your eyes
looked at the sign and if these flowers
were engraved instead, it would just be off
balance looking. But in this case, I think
our score text is gonna go really well with
our scored florals. Alright, it's time
for you to create your own scored pennant banner. And after that's completed, you should have three
unique SVG files that are almost ready to sell. So in our next lesson, we're going to talk through the final checklist before we
get our files listed online
9. Final Checklist: You should have a few completed
SVG files at this point. Now let's take them through
a final checklist right before we get ready to sell
or send them off to test her. So the first thing we
want to check here is RR pads united. In this mostly has
to do with text. We just want to make sure when
we created this text that we took that extra step
and united the pads. So everything here
looks good to go. Now we want to make
sure that the size of our design is rounded. So when I select
everything here, you can see that we've got a lot of decimal
places going on. So what I'm gonna do is
turn this down to 4.5. Then I think we're
going to try for 3.4. And that didn't make any
noticeable change to me, so I'm happy with
that final size. Now when we go to list
this in our description, we can easily say exactly what size this
design is supposed to be. Now we're going to
check that our colors are correctly assigned. So teal is score, which means a single
stroke, and that's correct. That is just single
cut is the same, that is a single line. And then this purple, pink color is our
engraved color. So everything here looks
to be assigned correctly. Now let's take a look
at our Layers panel. You can see here that we have a lot of individual
elements going on. And this is going to make it frustrating for somebody
used to working in layers who would want to go in and change a whole
group at a time instead of having
to click all of these little elements
to change individually. So to do that, we're
going to start with our teal strokes here. They are all individual
elements at this point, we're going to select them all and go ahead and
click Command eight. So you can see that got rid of a few things on
our Layers panel. And now just to double-check, I did that correctly. I see what step I'm on
and then this on view. And it got everything
that's teal, so we're good to go here. Next, I'm going to do
this to the flowers. Now, we don't want to create compound pads with
all of flowers together because we want them
to be able to move around. So we're just doing the
flowers individually. And then I'm gonna pull
them all over here. I don't see any other just
individual pieces over here. So we're good to go with
our compound paths. Next, I want to
make sure there's no overlapping elements that aren't supposed to
be cut out together. This too. I wanted to be cut
out individually, so I'm going to pull
it aside here so that it's not cut out
from this backer piece. I want the months to stay
in the strokes to stay, but everything else is
cut out individually. Now I want to group together all the things
that I need to stay. So these three
elements, the cutting, scoring and engraving,
we're going to hit Command G for group. We didn't make a
compound path there because the colors
need to stay separate. But since it's grouped
together, now, it won't be able
to be adjusted or accidentally moved when
it's not supposed to be. The last thing I like to do
is just clean up the file. So let's pretend this
is our final file that we're actually selling. I want to make sure that
things are spaced closely so that material is not
wasted and set it up. It looks nice when
they first open it. Alright, so our file here is ready to be sent to
a tester or to sell. Now, especially if you're
new to laser files, I highly recommend
getting your files tested by a laser owner before
listing them for sale. The easiest way to find testers is actually in Facebook groups. Because I am so
used to glow Forge. That's just the
brand I work with. I have this list here of all of the different glow Forge
groups and their members. I would suggest actually joining
probably these top five. They've all been helpful
to me in their own way. And most of them allow
you to post for testers, I know this group here, they have a special
thread just for testers. Go ahead and
double-check to see if any new rules have been made. But at this point, I think in these
other four groups, in the top five, you are
allowed to ask for testers. So to do this, here's what I would say. I would just make a
posterior and say Hi, I'd love to find
some testers for whatever design you
are looking for. If this is true of you, I design and fabric
on Spoonflower, but I'm new to laser design. Edit that however
is appropriate. Then ask if you'd be
interested to test and possibly provide a photo. You can drop your email below in the comments and let me know what your
turnaround time is. I do like asking you about turnaround time because
sometimes testers will volunteer but then not really have any plans to get
to it for a week or so. And I just appreciate people who can have a little bit faster
of a turnaround time. So the next thing I would do is actually upload screenshots. If possible, upload
a screenshot with what your file looks like
so that the laser owners can have a feel for what they're testing and also a
mock-up if possible. These you can see I just
put some text over top. Unfortunately, in
a lot of groups, people do copy designs, so I just want to make
it a one-step harder for this design to be copied
by putting my logo on top. So once you have
people commenting to offer to test your file for you, I would just email
that off to them. I would just ask
and I found that most testers are actually
okay if you use their photos. In this exchange, you are
allowing your file tester to create products with your file and be
able to sell those. And then in exchange
you'll get feedback. And oftentimes a photo that you can use
with your listing. If you don't want commercial
use of your files, you're going to need
to specify that upfront because it's
not that common. I would say the vast majority of file sellers do allow commercial
use of the end product. You are so close to selling. In the next lesson, we'll cover the basics of listing
your files on Etsy and all of the things that I would recommend
including with your files
10. Selling Your Files: So you've gone through
a final checklist and your files have been tested
and are ready to sell. Now it's time to gather
all the other files you'll need to get your
designs listed on Etsy. I like to make it as easy as possible for my customers
to sell what they've made. With my files, I include
an instruction PDF, a commercial use photo, and I include all
the information I think they'll need and
the listing description. And I want to make
it easy for you too. So I'm including links to Canva templates for
all of these things. They will be in the
downloads for this lesson. My first choice for
eliciting photo would be a picture of your actual
finished product. This shows your customer
that your file has been tested and they can easily envision what
they could create. Oftentimes, testers will
provide photos for you to use. But it may be hard to create a cohesive look with photos from a couple
of different sources. So my second suggestion
would be to create a simple mockup using a wood texture photo
and a clipping mask. I use a dark brown for engraved
or scored elements and then don't forget to
add a drop shadow to make it look more realistic. Once your photo or
mock-up is ready, you can use the Illustrator or canva template I've included to create your listing photo. Whether you use a
photo or a mock-up. I do highly suggest including
it with your files so that your customers can then use that to start
selling right away. I love Canva because you can so easily edit things to
fit your brand style. So go ahead and edit the
colors, fonts, texts, really anything about
these documents is going to be editable for you. I start by including
details about the limited commercial
use license I include with my files. What's mainly important to me is that my files are only used for physical products and the files themselves are not allowed to be sold or shared in any way. This is for
informational purposes only and it's not legal advice. So consult your own attorney and add your license
information here. These are known and
trusted suppliers and the laser world and where I personally ordered
my materials from. I like to list
anything here that customers will need to create
their finished products. Then I include my
color key so they'll know which actions
belong to which colors. Then say this is a PDF and
include it with your listing. Alright, let's walk
through this listing together with my title. I always start with SVG and then go on to describe the file. I like to include
laser cutting and beginner because those
are commonly searched. And then you can upload a photo. So here I have just
used the template and Canva and then created
a simple mock-up. Next, we're going to
upload our digital files. This is how I typically
organize my file. I will have the name of
the design and the title, and then make sure I have the SVG instruction
PDF and the photo. So then you can just
highlight all of these and upload them to your listing. So currently, it's
the only allows you to upload five files at a time. So if you have more
designs than this, I would suggest
creating a zip file. Okay, So this description, I actually just copied and
pasted from our sample listing description template and just
edit it to fit my design. The personalization
section, this is kind of a bonus added layer of protection for both
me and my customers. So this is what they see in
the personalization section. I say this listing is
a digital file only. Type anything to agree. Etsy won't let them
check out unless they type something
in the character box. So this just ensures
that they doubled, agree that they are getting
a downloadable product. When I didn't have this
personalization section setup, I was getting a
few messages from customers thinking they were
getting physical products. But now this solves the problem. So pricing for me, I start my pricing around $5. A lot of the files I create
are more on the simple end. And I'm trying to walk the
balance between how much is a laser owner willing to pay before they'll just
make it themselves. So for me, this is
a good price point, but I would suggest actually
just taking a look around at x0 and seeing what others
are pricing their files at. If you're a more
established designer, maybe in Spoonflower or
another selling avenue, you might find you can start your designs at a
higher price point. I just suggest doing
your own research and testing out a couple
of different prices to see what works for you. So 999 is the highest amount at z will allow you to enter. Then I don't have to worry about restocking it in my store
for a little while. So obviously you
want to make sure the details are digital files. And then the category I have
is cutting machine files. A lot of these attributes
I just leave blank. You can add them if you want. It's sometimes helps
in the search results. And then I'll add tags here. I don't bother with materials
or shipping obviously. And for digital files, there's just automatically
know returns or exchanges. I would choose the
shop section to place this under which
would be a baby designs. Probably. The last thing to look
at is automatic renewal. Makes sure that it's checked. And then you're ready to publish
11. Customer FAQs: The last thing I want
to go over is answers to my customers frequently
asked questions. So these questions and
answers are going to cover 99% of the
messages I receive. So there's no need
to fear that you don't understand
lasers completely. These answers are
really going to help in all of those scenarios. So the first question is, a file won't open
or I can't find the files or the SVG
file is missing. This is the most common question and it usually happens
because people are trying to open SVG files in a browser or in a program
that doesn't read them, or for some reason at sees file downloads doesn't
always work the first time. They really just
need to try again. And honestly, 99% of the time that will
solve the problem. I also link them to
the article from Etsy that explains how to
download digital items. The second question
happens because a lot of people don't
read the description. So I usually will
respond with this that, hey, check back in
the description. And most files can be used with one eighths inch material
to a quarter-inch material, then point them back to
the PDF instructions. So the next question, hopefully
you won't get very often, but when will my order ship? Occasionally, even
though we have so many obvious places
explaining this as digital file, some people order anyway. So I just explain this is
where digital download and reminder that there are no refunds for digital products. The next question is
from cricket owners. So I get a lot of
questions about, hey, can this file work for a
different type of machine? And I don't have any experience
with other machines, so I usually just lean
into this answer and then custom orders is something
you can make decisions about. I personally don't
take customer orders because I have so many
things I'm trying to create and I like to make files that are available to everybody and aren't personalized
a one-person. But it might be worth it to develop some customer
relationships. Or maybe you have the
time or just want to make some custom files and you
can respond how you'd like. This is another
one of those that you can choose what
you want to do. For me, I only offer SVG files. So you could also offer PDF. That would be my
second suggestion. There's a couple
other file types that other machines use. But for me personally, because I make so many vials, I just get tired of having
to convert all of them. And honestly, anyone
can convert a file in a different design
software or there's a lot of free online
conversion things, so I just point them to that. The next question has to do with how Adobe Illustrator files
play with other software. And sometimes it's not great, especially with light
burn and silhouettes. And another one is Corel Draw. Those three don't always work great with
Adobe Illustrator, but I just remind
them they need to check their import settings because this is the setting
that Illustrator exports in. And there are other
free software that have different export sizes. So they just need to make sure
it's alright on their end. And honestly, because
Illustrator is just the dominant software, they really should
know about this, but I do find some customers
are still confused. And lastly, you might get some questions about people saying aren't my file
doesn't print, right? I've found the most common reason for this is that they're not reading which colors
go to which actions. So you can just remind
them that, hey, a scoring file is not
going to engrave, right? Or engraving file is definitely not going to
score how you'd like. So just make sure you are
checking out the color code. One more thing to note is I do occasionally get questions from laser owners asking about their particular
lasers software. And there's so many laser brands out there that I just
always recommend, hey, why don't you join
a Facebook group or see if there are
community forums for your brand because
you'll be able to learn a lot more information than
I'd be able to help you with. That is honestly the entire
list of questions that I get. So hopefully this will give
you some confidence in how to answer customer questions
when they come along
12. Final Thoughts: Alright, this is the
end of the class. By now, you should have a
basic understanding of how to design for laser cutting,
engraving and scoring. And I hope you're feeling
excited and motivated to create even more
SVG files of your own. I'd love to see your
project progress. Feel free to upload
screenshots of your work in the Projects
and Resources tab, or leave a comment if you have any questions from the lessons, you really can design an endless amount of files with what we've
learned in this class. But there's also so much
more we could explore from learning how to design
stands and 3D shapes, to working with different types of acrylic and other materials. If you'd be interested
in a level to class or have specific laser
projects in mind. I'd love to hear from
you in the comments. Thank you so much for
taking the time to watch this class and be open to
learning new techniques. The income from SVG
file sales has given me so much time and
location of freedom. And I'm so excited to
pass along my knowledge and invite you into the
world of laser design. You can follow along
with my journey at Bella collective.com or on Instagram
at Villa dot collective. I can't wait to see
what you create.
Liz Olson, SVG Designer | Etsy Expert
