How to Make DIY Aztec Geometric Wood Wall Art with Glowforge

We just threw together these Aztec wood wall art pieces using Illustrator, the Glowforge, and then some Unicorn Spit and we'll show you how we did it right now. What is up? Welcome back. Do you like to do it, build it, or make it? So do we and we have a new video each week. This week we're diving in head first right into the Unicorn Spit. Yep, we're looking at bringing some additional like home decor items to the farmer's market. So we, you know, we just started that a couple of weeks ago. We have some outdoor signs, we have some front porch leaners, but I want to put a couple things on the table and bring some farmhouse signs. And I wanted to get into the Unicorn Spit. Yeah, so we decided that this week we're going to do a geometric pattern and we're really going to test out some of this Unicorn Spit because the colors are so vibrant and beautiful and I'm so excited that we have a really cool project to try them out on. These are gonna pop. Step one, we're going to gather all of our supplies. We really just needed some eighth inch birch plywood we picked up from the Home Improvement Shop. Yep, and some quarter inch MDF. We'll use this for the backer and the frame. And Unicorn Spit, that's the key. You know, all the colors. However, today we're just going to try and keep, well Garrett just informed me before we hit record that he's got his own idea. So I'm trying to keep mine a little, I don't know, monotone maybe or a little low-key. And of course he doesn't do anything low-key. So the colors I'm using are Blue Thunder, Lemon Kiss, Zia, and white, what does that say? Ning? Whitening? A whitening. I get it. I'm using the same but I'm gonna throw in some of this sparkle. What is this? It's right here on the back, sorry. Dolly Firebird. Dolly Firebird. Step two, we're going to make our designs. That is the motion for design making apparently. Does not compute. We're going to jump into Illustrator. I'm going to show you a real quick easy way to make some geometric shapes. We're just going to use the line tool. It's a whole lot of line tool really. All right, let's start with a box that's 10 inches high, 18 inches wide. I'm going to draw a line using my pen tool. I'm going to click it, hold shift, and then I'm going to click when I'm done and escape to cut my line. I'm going to switch back over to my select tool. I'm going to make this line slightly taller than the box. Then I'm going to copy, paste. I'm going to hold shift and I'm going to tilt it. I'm going to go ahead and make this slightly wider than the box. Now I'm just going to select everything, center it vertical, center it horizontal. There, my box should be locked now or set. Zoom in on the bottom right square and let's make these lines blue so I'll be able to see them a little bit. And back to the pen tool. I'm going to click it. I'm going to hold shift. This should keep it on a 45 and I'm going to click it. Now I'm going to hit escape and hit my select tool again. Let's make these red. Now I'm just going to copy and paste. Let's move it in a little bit. I'm thinking about half inch wide. Looks about half inch wide to me. I'll do another one. I'll do a couple of these and then I'm going to copy them all and paste them again. Four, four looks good. All right, let's copy all these and paste them on. Copy, paste. I'm just going to keep copying and pasting the lines until I fill up this whole little bottom corner. You know what? I'm going to draw a box and make it like a half inch wide and I'm going to use this as a guide to make sure all of my lines are spaced evenly. I think this will be the easiest way. Make it a half inch. Tilt it on a 45 by holding shift and just giving it a boop. I'm just going to use this to line up all of my little lines. Just shift them all over a little bit. Make sure they're all spaced correctly. Now to make sure these are all the right size, I'm going to use my selection tool. I'm going to grab a corner, hold shift, and just line it up with the blue lines. Grab a corner, hold shift, and line it up with the blue line. I'm going to do this for all of them. Just make sure they just touch the blue line. Like in the middle of the blue line, I guess. All right, let's use this box again. We're going to use this box over here as a guide to know where to put our vertical and horizontal lines. Hold shift and make it straight again. Vertical. Let's place it in here and steal one of these lines in the middle. Copy, paste, and then we're going to hold shift and make it vertical again. All right, now I'm going to place it over here and I'm just going to shrink these down. I'm going to use this as a guide and shrink all of these lines down until they intersect the lines that are going at a 45 and just kind of make a pattern going through placing these little vertical and horizontal lines through here making what I think is a cool pattern. Cool pattern. Zoom in and make sure everything touches. Now I'm going to get real close and make sure all of our lines touch. All of everything lines up and intersect so that we don't have to cut it out with an exacto later on. Looks good. Now let's group all of our lines. We'll select them all. We'll click group. Now we can use the mirror tool but I like to start in the bottom right and it likes you to start in the bottom left so it doesn't work. Control Z brings us back. I'm going to do a copy and paste. I'm going to slide it into place. Top right. Then I'm going to go to object. Object. Transform and reflect and I'm going to reflect it horizontal. Zoom in to make sure my lines are all lined up. Zoom out. Copy both sections. The top and the bottom. Then I'm going to do a paste and then I'm going to go back to object. Transform. Reflect. Vertical. Let's scooch all these in place. Make sure the lines line up. Everything is where it's supposed to be and export it as an SVG. Step three. We're going to make all of our cuts. I took that eighth inch piece of plywood out and I cut it into two pieces so it'll fit in the Glowforge and then I'm just going to use the settings inside Glowforge to make my cuts. And you could use that same SVG that you just created and use that on a Cricut as well. A couple of years ago we did something very similar in Cricut Design Studio. I think this pattern actually came from Cricut Design Studio but you can make your own. We used faux leather to cut ours and we mounted it just to a piece of a 1x12 and we just cut it square and then we cut the leather and then we mounted it here. So you can use that same SVG for your Cricut too. You can check out that video over here and I'll put it over Kim's head. All right but this time we're using the unicorn spit. That's right. Upping our game. This 12 inch masking tape is a lifesaver. It covers the board. I don't have to worry about overlapping any masking tape. It covers a Glowforge board in one go and it prevents that burning and charring on the surface of the boards. The eighth inch birch plywood is pretty soft so I will just use the thick bass plywood and that usually cuts it. Step four. Now we stain. I'm gonna spray my board first and then stain it. Kim's going in naked. Right it just says for the boldest color use right out of the bottle. So that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna wet my board and see if I can make it look a little translucent little poppy. First we have to pull all the masking off. It's not that bad. And give it just a little spritz of water just to dampen the boards a little bit. Oh we do have some gloves because this stuff does stain your hands. Garrett has one-upped my design over here with a million little pieces. Garrett will see you tomorrow morning when he finishes his. I might have gone a little deep huh? What color is yours? I hope you have enough color for all your pieces over there. Yeah me too. Step five. Now we're gonna glue it down. We're gonna glue it to the backer and kind of just glue it all together. I guess glue the frame on and everything. I'm gonna paint my board with blue and just transfer my image onto the whole glued board. What say you Kim? Well I do I do not agree with this. I think I'm gonna use my gorilla contacts in it. All right the race is on then. I told him his looks like Evel Knievel. Yeah good I love Evel Knievel. You do. Can you imagine? Can't totally. Oh fun fact so I did I loved Evel Knievel. Everything was Evel Knievel or Fonzie for the longest time. Anyway we got on Evel Knievel because that's what his uh that's what his artwork looks like. I thought it looked like his cape. Yeah it kind of does look it went on a lot more even it looks like. Like yours looks good but it's very opaque. I'm surprised at how opaque it is. Yeah well I through this process I learned that um it would leave as it dried it left streaks so with this foam brush so I felt that dabbing it seemed to to work better. It left it left fewer brush marks so and I think I mean. Mine's okay it came out a little more pink than I'd like. Yeah I could see that. I was really going for Evel Knievel but now it's a little more less evil. Yeah it's it's pink and blue. Yeah it turned out pink and blue. But it's a pretty cool design. I think you could blow it up and really make it huge. Oh yeah I would love to make this one huge. It's kind of what I was thinking though. Be bigger. And stain them. I would say I mean I know we used a lot of colors here because I really wanted to try that unicorn spit. Yeah. But I think some you know coffee or jacobine and some grays and doing some real like. Oh yeah kind of keep them earth tony. Yeah rustic looking. I think with some white wash. Yes. Yeah yeah those would look very classy. Very classy. This may not be as classy with the pink in it and all. But all right it's about that time. Oh would you like some more Kim and Garrett? We appeared on a podcast this week. Oh yeah. It's because we make podcasts with Vincent Ferrari and uh looks like we're bad out of time. So if you're not going to join us for the after show we will see you next week where we'll do it build it make it again. Just like every week. Do it every week. Can you guys hear a cat meowing at the door? I don't know. Suddenly she's starving. We're doing it building it and making it. I might put a word on mine. Bam. Yeah you know what yeah that might be cool. But I don't want to hide it all that cool pattern you know you don't want to hide it. A little word. All right. Is. Wow wow wow.