This is the design that I based my carvey off of. I chose to do a holiday and Christmas based design because it's that time of year and I wanted to surprise my family with it on Christmas. I really like this design, because I didn't want to be too simple and make a simple Christmas tree and I like the way that the words are written in the shape of a Christmas tree.
This was my first sketch for my design. As you can see, I made a lot of my lines very small and the details and dots were very tiny.
The next thing I did was, I prepared my carving tile by choosing a color that was white but had red on the inside so that the inside of it when it was carved would be red (this isn't my tile.) To put in the tile you have to loosen all of the clamps and insert the tile, then you tighten the clamps again. Finally, you shut the lid and press carve on your computer and watch it carve!! The machine works by the bit carving your design into the tile. It is very interesting to watch.
This is what my carving turned out to look like in the end!! As you can see it got all of my details and I love how you can see every letter very clearly. My carving turned out exactly the way that I expected and hoped it would turn out. I balanced out the positive and negative shapes by making the letters and circles positive so they stood out. I am most proud of the fact that even though I had to go back and make the letters way thicker than I wanted at the beginning it still turned out perfect. Next time I would try to make the lines thick to begin with but that wasn't even very difficult to do anyways. I'm so happy with all of the choices I made with doing this project.