"Plastics....There's a great future in plastics." The Graduate (1967)

Back in the January 2010, I started designing some new ornaments.  A friend’s company had purchased an industrial laser, and having had access in the past to one, I knew what it could be used for.  I had seen lots of 3-dimensional ornaments made with wood, paper, fabric and glass which had been joined together.  We had talked about the possibilities and I had even gone so far as going through the drops looking at the different types of materials I could get out of their recycling bins.  During January and February I designed over 24 ornaments which I called “vaned” ornaments.  The ornament would be made up of 6 or 8 vanes which were secured around two cogs with either 6 or 8 cut-outs.  The vanes would be notched as well so alignment would be fairly easy.

Mainly geometric shapes: globes, penta-, hexa-, octo-gons, with a couple of star shapes and ovids, all designed around a central axis.  There were several ‘fanciful’ shapes as well.  After converting to the laser CAD program and cleaning the designs on any extraneous lines, the parts were cut and I received 2 heavy boxes with roughly 16 of each design in clear and translucent blue, then a couple months later, I received a couple more boxes with parts cut in opaque orange, white, ‘glo-edge’ yellow and opaque yellow.

The ornaments are somewhat cost-prohibitive as the laser time itself is measured in seconds.  The cost to cut an ornament is more than the acrylic used.  Although I did receive enough parts that I will have a nice collection of modern ornaments.  As long as I don’t request too often, my friend said he would cut more for me when they are not using the laser even to the point of allowing me to run the machine to cut more as long as I also help with their product (which I have done in the past).  The initial boxes are still being used and I have unique ornaments for several friends.  One a year in a color combination, after several years a collection on the tree.

Ornaments without beads

I do not limit myself to beaded ornaments.  One of the first ornaments we did in art class was constructing an icosahedron, a solid made up of 20 equilateral triangles.  Using 1 inch circles we scored the triangle onto the circle, bent the flaps up and then filled the triangle with Christmas images.  Then we glued the 20 parts together to form the ornament. 
 


A couple years ago I did a cube with rhomboids instead of squares.  The Platonic solids are 3-D shapes made from same size equilateral triangles, squares, and equilateral pentagons.  There are only 5 solids which can be made using these geometric shapes.  When you start looking at using shapes such as rhomboids, isoceles triangles, and diamonds, the solids morph into additional shapes.  When you start mixing shapes you get an even more diverse set of 3 dimensional shapes, known as the Archimedean Solids, one of which is the shape of the soccer ball, made up of hexagons and pentagons.





It is nice to have friends who have industrial lasers.

Other ornaments which I have designed use acrylic plastic that is cut with an industrial laser and then joined together around a central axis to form 3 dimensional ornaments.  Sometimes it is fun to be ADD.  I have over 25 designs in this genre.  I use 2 discs which are cut with recessed areas to allow alignment and gluing.  The discs also have a small circle cut in their middle to allow for a headpin to act as a point of attachment for the chain.  (OK, I admit I use a bead in each side of the disk to help with the balance.)