S.H.I.E.L.D Wall Art

This is my own take on the S.H.I.E.L.D logo. I have added a little colour to it to pretty up and make it look great displayed on the wall. Warning, Hydra Agents this instructable will self destruct before Step 1.

I am a big fan of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and always wanted a little more colour which I managed to add with the shield on the eagle. I am planning on adding LED's at a future date to notify me of messages and events that I need to respond to. Please pop back and see how this progresses.

I downloaded the S.H.I.E.L.D logo and used the live trace function in Adobe Illustrator to convert it to a vector path for use within LaserCut. Live trace makes it super easy to convert graphics to vectors without any hassle!

Once I had the vector, I opened it in LaserCut and selected which paths I wanted to cut out completely, and which I only wanted to engrave. For time and power reasons, as well as appearance, all of the lines, even the ones that will be engraved, will actually be achieved through the 'cut' action. The engraved lines will still be cut, just at a lower power so that it doesn't cut all the way through. To achieve this, the laser has to be told which lines to cut at high power and which at lower. This is done by changing the colour of the cutting paths, and assigning different power levels to each.

After selecting and assigning the different paths, the file was sent to the laser and the design cut out of birch ply.

I then painted the ply to create my wall art. I used standard tempera poster paints, which gave good coverage and a matte finish. After being allowed to dry my wall art was complete!

Well, I say complete, I have plans to enhance it further, watch this space...