I used Inkscape to help me make this piece.  I then used my Glowforge, a laser printer, to cut out my pieces. The pieces on the inside will be cut out, and thus make it easier to paint your pieces.  I cut out several different pieces I was working on all at once, which made assembling and putting everything together a little harder. The assembly is a little time consuming, but this style makes the painting easier and faster.   I found if you have a lot of small pieces of tape in your Glowforge after a piece has been cut out, then you can use the extra strips of tape to help gather the smaller pieces.

The fonts I used were Serif for the Fall words and Watermelon Script for the Sweet. I had some scrap wood I was going to be placing this design on top of. So, I measured my scrap piece of wood and made a rectangle the same size as my scrap wood in Inkscape. This allowed me to scale my design according to the piece of wood I will be using. My scrap wood was about 7.4 inches wide by 11 inches tall. It is also important to make sure your letters are not going to be too thin once you have your piece all scaled and ready to go. 

Once I had my design to my liking, I changed some of the designs to different colors. This allows me to move the pieces separately in Glowforge. If all the pieces are the same color, then it will think they are the same pieces, and thus need to be moved together. By moving the pieces separately, I am able to place the designs on my wood closer together, and thus not waste any wood. I then ran the pieces and gathered everything out of my Glowforge. Since I did several different projects all in one run, I also had to separate the different project pieces out. I do not recommend doing this especially if a piece has a lot of small pieces or if pieces from the different projects are similar to each other.   

I then started to paint all of my pieces. I decided to paint a darker color for the outside pieces, and a lighter version of that color for the inside pieces. Once everything was painted and dry, I started to glue everything down on to my scrap piece of wood.  I started out by applying a strong bond Elmer’s glue (wood glue would also be good) to the back of my outline piece. I used a thin tip bottle to apply my glue in smaller areas. This prevents an overflow of glue when you press the piece down onto the wood backing. You can wipe off any extra glue that might seep out. Next, I applied glue to the inside of the outline shape where my inside pieces would go, or directly on the back of the larger inside pieces, and put them in place.  

This piece was very relaxing, but time consuming. I enjoy painting, and do not mind taking the time to do so, especially if I do not have to worry about being very precise and detailed with my painting. Do you like to paint? This is a nice simple piece. If you change the colors, then it could really change the feel and look of the entire piece. I thought about rounding the edges/corners, but decided to leave them as is.