Engraved Burlap Eiffel Tower

First of all, today is Jax's birthday over at http://alyandash.com. Head on over and tell her Happy Birthday!
Here is what I gave Jax for her birthday....
It is an Engraved burlap wall hanging. Yep, I said engraved! Crazy right?

I was trying to think of a cute little gift I could make for Jax and suddenly I remembered a conversation we had like 6 weeks ago. She came over to my house and saw I had covered a board with burlap. (6 weeks later and it is still just a board covered in burlap!) She said, "that looks cool. I would put the Eiffel Tower on it." Well Jax, I hope you meant that! ;)

I was going to try and freezer paper stencil the Eiffel Tower on. As I was preparing all of my stuff to cut the freezer paper on the laser engraver, I had a Eureka! moment. Wouldn't it be cool if I could get the laser to engrave on the burlap? With some luck it will turn dark brown and look painted, or stamped.
Lots of fiddling around with the settings later, I got it to work. I was a little worried because burlap is very flammable and the laser has caused a fire or two in it's time. Thankfully we were blaze free!! I am so excited with the way it turned out. I have lots of ideas rolling around for other things I could engrave on burlap.
Here is a close-up shot of the tower. It looks like the laser just sort of burned away some of the "fluff" in the fibers. When you compare engraved to not engraved, the weave looks much farther apart on the engraved.



I am going to skip a full tutorial but if you want to try freezer paper or stamping, here is generally what I did.

1. Spray paint a board or wood plaque. I used an ivory color, but white would have been just fine too!
2. Staple or hot glue the burlap onto the board. I used hot glue. Make sure you pull the burlap nice and tight so it isn't "baggy" on the front.

3. Stamp or freezer stencil away.
**Tip- I would use acrylic paint as opposed to fabric paint. I would also use an almost dry brush. You want the paint on the burlap and not necessarily all over the board underneath. Jax used this "dry paint" technique on her Rock Star shirt, if you want some more details. For stamping, I would see what happens if you used regular stamp ink.

• I found the Eiffel Tower here:http://scale-files.blogspot.com/
• Great for anyone with Sure Cuts a Lot to cut out on their Cricut. I think almost any graphics program can open SVG files, so it might work even if you want to do it by hand.
• The font is called Porcelain and can be downloaded at dafont.com
  

4. Attach something to hang it up with. I ended up using a 3M command strip on the back. I wanted to use one of those sawtooth hangers, but the nails were too long for this thin wood plaque of wood.

Happy Birthday Jax! I hope you love your present.

Post Edit: I have been getting some questions about my laser. Here is a previous post that has some pictures and explains a little bit better! http://cuteasafox.blogspot.com/2010/04/self-indulgance.html

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