Introduction: Laser Cut Leather Keychain
More by the author:
About: I am a queer, transgender, nonbinary, and mixed-race picture book writer/illustrator. As a young person, I didn’t have the words to explain the big feelings I had about my identity and relationships. It is so …
3 materials needed: leather scrap, vector-editing software (such as Illustrator or Inkscape), and a cutting device (like an exacto knife or laser cutter)
- Leather is laser cuttable! It smells terrible right after it gets cut (kind of like the smell of burning flesh), but the smell dissipates after a few days.
- I just finished another project that used a fair amount of leather. I wanted something to do with all of the leftover scrap pieces. This keychain is pretty small at ~2.25x1.5" and fits nicely on most keychains.
- Leather can be difficult to get to lay flat, so I taped down the edges.
- The laser cutter I use is color codable, so I cut the outside lines at 100% power, 10% speed, and the inside part is cut at 90% power, 100% speed.
- It cut super fast for me in one pass and was finished cutting in under 2 minutes.
- If you dye or carefully wash the leather after it is finished cutting, you can remove a lot of the burn marks too.
Illustrator file attached!
