Laser Cut Workshop 4

We were given a brief to do a paper cut including 3 layers. It could be anything we wanted; I decided to just do some nice patterns. I looked at things like this to help inspire my design, the layered colors and patterns really build up a nice feel.

This is my first attempt, it went a bit wrong. I grabbed the image of the internet and live traced it using illustrator I then joined all the separate parts together so pieces wouldn't fall out. However when I got into onto coral I realized it had so many vector points that the paper would probably just burn. I had to compromise and delete a lot of sections. I still think it came out looking pretty cool.

Some of the sections that feel out, I thought they might be useful for something.

Here's my second layer, it came out much better that my first one although in some places it burnt a tad.

I had a piece of paper underneath and it left behind the other part which looked pretty nifty as well. I tried using this part but it didn't expose enough detail from the piece underneath. 

My third layer was just a circle to frame of the piece. 

I tried adding some of the left over pieces into this one but it wasn't too effective, if I had of cut something with a similar design I feel that could work really well.

Next time I have a go I'm going to draw my own design rather than take images of the internet, I think that will push my illustrator skills as I'm naff at the moment. I also think I should have joined the tree to a box so it fits into a A4 sheet like the example I looked at. It would finish it off and make it feel more like a whole piece, rather than bits just layered over each over.