Painting the sheets became a bit of a struggle I wasn't expecting. I started by painting one sheet, doing my best to get the yellow color to match up as well as I could to the yellow on my website. As I painted I noticed the substrate start to curl on the edges. I then started to have difficulty with matching colors for the other sheet and having enough paint so I just decided to have the box be yellow.
When I began using the laser cutter I started to have more challenges primarily because the substrate was painted. First, because the edges were slightly curling up the laser got too close to the substrate and it started to burn. Then when it came to trying to cut out the first set, the power was too high and it burned the substrate even more leaving a smokey effect.
Thankfully the lab tech helped me position the content on the first round to save extra substrate so we were able to run the box through 2 more times adjusting the intensity of the laser. I did have to hand cut out the box with an exacto knife because we had to lower the laser intensity as it continued to burn the substrate when it cut. So instead of cutting the dielines out completely for the box it just left a mark that I could follow.
Deciding to not paint the sheets for the cards was a blessing in disguise because of needing to engrave and cut all the way to the edge of the sheet, with the substrate curling I would have burned all of the cards on the edges.
I did have to purchase an extra sheet for the final row of cards, but the laser cutter engraved and cut them out perfectly.
Overall I'm happy with engraving of the project. I really love how the cards came out with the detail and contrast of the illustrations. The game does work too with finding the pairs and it's actually pretty fun to play.
For my previous laser cut packaging assignment I used double sided take to hold the package together. I had started with the double sided tape again for this box, but because of the paint it wasn't sticking. So I had to carefully peel off the tape and use tiny dots of hot glue to hold the box together.
Some negatives that I found on the last project and that reappeared here. I thought for the last project that the peeling of the top layer of engravings close to a fold was only because I had engravings wrapping fully over fold lines. But even here with icons just being above a fold they still peeled. I tried using a little bit of liquid glue to flatten them back together.
I also noticed again that the package is a little bowed and curved. Even with creasing and scoring the package is still not as structured as I had hoped.
On Tuesday morning (bright and early at 8 am) we have our final critique for the project.
______________________________________________________________________
