Too Much? Where am I going with this? Learning New Things!! I don't even know!! It's Friday.

August 2, 2024

I started working on these engraved photos a couple weeks ago in the midst of working on the blog of how to take a picture of a silhouette of your pets. I started playing with the program that I use, Lightburn. For all you laser people out there you know what I am talking about. I have been working with this program for about two years now and I am completely self taught… of course I look stuff up online and how to do things when I am stuck, but it seems like every day I learn more and more about the program and what it is capable of.  In the past, I tried to do photos, but I couldn’t figure out how and then after dabbling in the pictures in order to cut out the silhouettes I started discovering more things. So far, puppies and kitties seem pretty easy. It can a get a little hard when they are a light colored animal or if they’re white or if they’re a broken color. But as I’ve spent time playing with the program and working with it and trying to figure out how to overlap to create collages and cut out the photos, I have figured it out. I used to cut pictures out simply using my iPhone, and I am now using Lightburn as well.  I was  using Adobe for a lot of stuff last year which was great, but I started to realize that it really wasn’t really worth the cost and I found that I really just needed what I already had. So between my iPhone and Lightburn and Publisher, I’m able to work through and create new things as I need to…. like I said I’m always learning new things!! And it’s fun!!!! I swear every time I learn something in Lightburn, I just yell and giggle!! I talk to myself a lot….. I’m alone a lot in the shop so if I’m not talking to my dogs, I’m yelling at myself and sometimes the computer and sometimes my lasers….  just depends on what day it is!!

Over  the last couple weeks. I have really enjoyed working on new projects and learning new things and and it opens me up so much to other possibilities and customizations.  But also I kick myself because I’m like “you have to stop!!!!! You have to stop making new things!” - see I yell at myself.  I just make too much. It’s too overwhelming but I can’t stop. I think it’s ADHD and that the thoughts “I can do that!”  or “AJ can you make this?” … as I respond with “let me try…” also let me spend two days figuring this out!!

I was actually thinking about doing one or two of my geckos.  If you know me well enough, you’ve followed me enough, or we are friends in real life, you know I breed crested geckos and I also have mourning geckos who are all named Dave. We LOVE the Daves!!! They’re all a lot of fun and they take up a lot of my time, but I need to play with some of those pics to to see if I can make reptile engravings as well…. which I’m sure I can!!

The other morning I played around with a leaf from one of my plants…. Also any of you who knows me, knows I love plants as well and of course anybody who’s friends with me on Facebook or follows me or knows me personally probably knows who my Jose is…. My massive Jose Buono Philodendron that I got back in 2018, I believe. He sat around for a couple years with a couple of tiny leaves -you know maybe 6 to 8 inches long and and once I transferred him to a larger pot and gave him a pole, he went nuts and I didn’t realize how big they got.... the man I bought him from at a cute little shop called Fancy Free Nursery in Tampa, said that they get huge and fast if you give them something to climb on. Because I live in Illinois and not Florida, where he could just be fancy and free, I didn't think Jose could reach his full potential. Butt he basically outlawed the rule of transferring your plants into larger pots a little bit at a time as once I put them in a pot that was a decently bigger than what he was in, he went crazy and within that summer, I was like dang Jose, you need to go up even more! So I transferred him to another pot that was considerably bigger. It’s probably about 20" tall or so. This was gonna be a test to see if I should actually bump him up that much, but I did he went even crazier!! He just kept going and last year I was getting huge leaves and although I should have known this, I thought, my gosh, how big these guys actually get. I finally looked it up and it’s like 24 inches or so and my most recent leaf was 25" so I guess he’s about maxed out he’s just going up and up!! I need to extend that pole of his!!

And after after all that, I found that Jose's largest leaf engraved very nicely!! So, now, you are not limited to just pets!! And if you’re wanting something else and graved, I would love to take a stab at it!

Send pics soon!!! And new poles for Jose!!

-AJ