My sister and I learned about the Shapiro Design Lab through this blog online and thought it would be cool to create personalized Christmas gifts for our family and friends while learning to laser cut/engrave. The lab staff and the online course the design lab offered were incredibly helpful in allowing us, two people who had no prior exposure to laser cutting/engraving, to work together to create some amazing gifts. My sister drew the images to cut/engrave, I converted them into files the laser cutter could read, and we cut/engraved them in acrylic. We later learned that acrylic can be very nicely lit up using LEDs, so we added stands below the engraved images to hold an LED and light up our gifts. They turned out very well and everyone who received them was super happy and impressed. A huge thank you to the Shapiro design lab!
