Boost Your Laser Craft Sales with 3D Door Hanger: Step-by-Step Tutorial

What is up? Welcome back. Do you like to do it, build it, or make it? So do we. And we have new videos each week every Tuesday and Friday. Thank you for joining our session today. We thought we'd share a little more about us before we get started. We are small business owners, full-time crafters. We started with a YouTube channel about five years ago. We grew out of our home. And we grew into some warehouse space where we have production in the back and we offer DIY workshops in the front. You can also find us online at KNGMakeit.com where we offer laser cut craft kits, paints, and accessories. Today we're going to show you how to elevate your laser crafting game with some 3D door hangers. Step one. We're gonna gather all of our supplies. We needed some quarter-inch MDF for this project. This is what we're gonna cut all of our little pieces out of. If you're doing it on a desktop laser, you're probably gonna need three or four boards. We're also gonna use some of our Foxy Hughes outdoor craft paints. We're gonna use some varathane stain, varathane briar smoke stain. Then we're gonna use some Starbond thick glue. This will get in all the little cracks, hold everything together. Step two. We're gonna make all of our cuts. I'm gonna take this quarter inch MDF over to the laser to cut out all of our little pieces. We use light burn, but our files work in any of the major laser applications. Inside light burn we're just going to import our image. We're going to use an SVG for this one. We do include an SVG, an AI version, a DXF version, a desktop version, or is in most of them. And we also include a picture so you know what you're putting together in the end. We're going to import our SVG. Let's arrange it on our board. Now I'm using a hundred watt laser. So for this one, well for all of our files, we use red for cut, blue for score, green for a deep score, and black is usually fill. So let's go ahead and set our parameters. I want ten millimeters per second. Well this is a score. I want 200 millimeters per second and 15% power. And then for my cuts, I'm going to want 10 millimeters per second and 50% power. Okay and like we said, these work in almost any of the applications. So here's Glowforge. We'll go ahead and import into Glowforge. Now for this one I'm going to use the desktop version. That way if you don't have a pass-through, you can still make this at 16 inches except this one includes a puzzle piece. So here's the bottom puzzle piece of your backer and here's the top puzzle piece of your backer. And then the banner will sit over top and cover that puzzle piece and give it some more strength. And again here is XTool Creative Space. Let's import that same desktop one. This is if we're using our XTool P2. We don't want to scale. So again here is our image. Here is the bottom. There's the top. Inside XTool I use 6 millimeter MDF. That's the settings I use for the cutting. And inside Glowforge I like to use thick draft board. Thick draft board will cut through our quarter inch no problem. Alright back to XTool. Let's go make our cut. Step 3. Now we stain and paint. Like I said we're gonna use this Varathane Briar Smoke. Did you even know you could stain MDF? You can and it looks great. It gives it an extra whoa. Whoa. Yeah I don't know how I did that. I'm just using a simple paper towel and I'm gonna dip it in my stain. Wipe it on. Stain on. Stain on. Yeah that's exactly it. Wipe it on. Wipe it off. We just don't want to leave it on there. It dries. If you leave it too thick it dries kind of sticky. So if it doesn't look even don't worry it'll even out when you wipe it off. We don't have to do the middle here. If you see that I'm not staining the middle that's because I'm gonna put the center banner over this area and you won't see it. Won't see it and this way the glue will stick a lot better. So I'm just making it so I can kind of see the grain a little bit. Getting all that excess stain off. Perfect. Get this out of the way. Now it's time to paint all of our top pieces. You'll see that we have score marks in some of our pieces. This is so that you can place the pieces that go on top of them with perfect placement. We're gonna paint right over them. Don't worry about it. You'll barely be able to see them in the end and that's really all you need and that's really that's really all you want. We're gonna be using again our Foxy Hues outdoor craft paint. So this paint has UV properties, weather-resistant properties. It's perfect for these outdoor signs. I'm just gonna use this little FIFO bottle. Score it a little at the top of our plate. You can see here it's just at the top of the plate and that's so when I use our little 4-inch foam roller here. You see we reuse our rollers. It's fall. We're gonna use this orange a thousand times this fall. Easy. So we're gonna put our little handle in here. Push it on and then I can grab the paint from the side of my little, what would you call that? Paint blob. My little paint blob right at the top. Now you don't want too much paint on this handle. I'm gonna show it a close-up on the camera. This is too much paint. It's gonna end up oozing over the sides of your pieces and you don't want that. These look the best when you can kind of keep the sides clean and dark. Ooze free. And I'm gonna show you a little trick because nobody can paint it perfect. I've painted hundreds of these sides. I still can't paint it perfect. So we have a little trick for you at the end. I'll show you how to clean them up. All right like Garrett said we're just gonna paint right over our little piece here. Right over our score marks. You can't see it for a moment there but as it dries you'll be able to see the image so you'll know exactly where to put the word fall. Now we'll set that aside and we're gonna give that a second coat in just a minute. Now we're gonna do the bottom half here. We're doing this in a light brown. Thank you. Can I see that bag? Yes. Thanks. I had a second roller but I think it handled it. I think it rolled off the table. I'll be your lovely assistant. Thanks. Again I'm just gonna put the paint on the edge of my plate. Roll it. Just show them what it looks like when you have enough paint in there. Yeah. You can still see the sponge. So here you can still see there's a foam sponge. You can still see it's porous and doesn't have too much paint on it. And I'm just gonna roll right over the top. Right over all these little hole pieces. It doesn't ooze down in there because I only have a little bit of paint on my roller. And a little bit of pressure. You're not pushing too hard. True. Very true. Just trying to paint the top. All right. So we got that one done. Now for our smaller pieces here you can see we have some tape. When these come off of the laser we add this little painters tape and we make ourselves a little tape palette. The painters tape getting them off the lasers keeps all the pieces in the frame. We package these in these little frames so that they're easy to ship. And they're easier to get off the laser that way. And it kind of keeps everything together and protected during its travels either to their paint room or to someone's house. Even to the front to the workshop. Yeah. Or even to the workshop. All right. So I'm just gonna lift up our frame. All our little pieces come out. I'll make sure. Let's see this little triangle right here. All right. So let's do the word fall. Put that here. We're gonna do this in antique white. I can feel this already has. Because I'm reusing the rollers they already have paint in them. So sometimes you don't even have to add any more paint under your roller. Again it's you're trying to keep those clean edges. So the less paint you have on your roller. You want just enough paint. It's hard to describe. I don't want too much. I don't want it oozing out. And I don't want too little so that I have to push down really hard. Okay I have all of our little pieces rolled. The last thing I wanted to show you is that you can mix paints. So for these other two leaves. So I don't have to add or find another fall color. I'm just gonna mix a little bit of the red and a little bit of the orange. And I'm just gonna dab on here and hopefully give it like a little fall leaf color. See pretty cool right? Just a little something. That was super easy. And then I'm gonna dab the sponge in the yellow. And I'm gonna give this one a kind of a yellowy orange backer. A little more yellow in it. Alright now I have four different fall leaves. And then we could just kind of put them together. You ready for our super secret tip that how to keep these things looking sharp? Keep these edges looking black? It's a black Sharpie paint pen. You know you just run it down the sides. You know you might not be as skilled with the roller as Kim. So you just take it run it down the side. And it's not about getting up to the edge. It's about cleaning up any drips. Gives that visual appearance of a straight edge. Yeah all you want to do is make it look like a nice straight line. And then your eyes gonna glance over it and it's not gonna look like it's over the edge at all. Yeah but I'm so good you're having a hard time finding edges to clean. Usually you don't have to clean the bottom edge because it'll be hidden by the bottom layer. But I'm just gonna go ahead and just demonstrate. That's it. That's it. I think everything else is clean right? Yeah. Did a great job. Thanks. Very little cleanup. I feel like you're looking. No. You're trying to find something. Look at this. What is that? What is that? Oh. That's gonna cost you babe. Good as new. Not all heroes wear capes. Moving on. Step four. We're gonna bring it all together. We're gonna glue it all together with that Starbond thick. And we're gonna work our way up from the bottom of the sign. And then up from the backer. And we're just gonna use a little bit of glue. Kim likes to use the dot method. Well. Dot it around. You don't have for a large surface you want to just squeeze the glue. But if you're doing tiny little pieces. Let's say when we get to these little acorn pieces here. They're kind of small. The dots are gonna allow you to get just a little bit of glue and not too much glue. The thing with this Starbond is it adheres so well the two pieces of MDF. Like they are not coming apart. But it does dry with a little bit of haze around it. So if you've got a dark backer like this. You do not want to put too much glue. And you don't want it oozing out from underneath or around the sides. So you want just kind of a medium amount of glue. A medium amount of paint and a medium amount of glue. And I can still see my score marks. So lining this up is super easy. There's also two ways that we do our gluing. You can glue the piece. Or you can glue the backer and then put the piece in. If it's got score marks. It makes it a lot easier to know where to put the glue. This is Garrett and I's. We go round and round. I'm like oh it's easier to glue the piece. Because then I'll know. I won't. I'll know exactly where it goes. Because it's on the piece itself. And Garrett said you can glue inside the score marks. Yeah. Glue inside the score marks. That's how I like to do it. And here you can see we're gluing these bottom pieces or this bottom layer. Again from the bottom to the top. And that way everything stacks one on top of the other. And you don't. Lesson learned. You don't want to put your pieces at the top. Put your pieces at the bottom. And then try and squeeze something in the middle. Because inevitably it starts drying and it's too close together. And you can't get it in there. There's no moving it. You got like 30 seconds to move it around and get it in place. And then after about 30 seconds it is there for life. That is where it lives now. Yeah. Here you can see Garrett's just doing it right on the backer. And again these score marks allow that perfect placement. So nothing ends up wonky. Your L's aren't laying backwards or forwards. I got glue on my finger. Things are trying to come with me. Ready for the acorn pieces. That's right. So we're not gonna put fall on yet because we don't have this back layer of acorns on. Working from the...leaves and acorns on. Working from the backer up. You know how many times we glued these...the word fall down before we did the leaves? Yeah. Too many. And lessons learned for sure. It's definitely an embarrassing amount of times. Do you want to do these? Like that? You like to do them in a special way or something? Like cockeyed? Off center? Well no. You see line the bottom of the leaf up with the bottom of the leaf there. And line those up. Like that? Yeah. Yep. Step five and now we have the exits. We're really just gonna add a ribbon in these ribbon slots that we have and then a bow on top. So we have tried every method for attaching a hanger to the door signs. We glued them. We glued it. We nailed it. Screwed it. Screwed it. We could not get anything that would look nice that would hold. So we found these ribbon slots. Now this ribbon slot you just poke it through. Tie a knot on the back side. You gonna let me get closer to it? No. Forget it. I don't usually do it standing up but for the video I'm gonna do it standing up. Now I'm just gonna tie a little knot in the back and this is what's gonna actually hold it. It's not...it's never coming off. It's the best method and it's the simplest method. No extra gluing, screwing, nailing, nothing. And if you want to swap it or steal that ribbon for something else you just untie the little knot in the back or clip it. There we go. Now we got ourselves a little hanger and then this I pre-made our bow. This is the world's easiest bow. It's got four pieces of ribbon. A little piece of burlap in the back. We have a video tutorial on our YouTube channel. Show you exactly how we make this. The easiest bow. And I...which side is it going? This side. Left or right? Well right because of those leaves. Oh yeah. Or I guess from that view it's left right. Left right. Alright I'm using these cute little zip ties. They're also...they also make it super easy. And my little pair of scissors right here. I'm gonna snip off the excess zip tie. And there you have it. Step six. Profit. So we're all in at about $16 for this thing and they go for about $55 in our neck of the woods. That's right. If you're using your laser as a side hustle this is a great item to make to make with your laser and then be able to sell at craft shows or social media online. Let's say on Facebook to your family and friends. And it's a nice little profit in each one of them. Yeah and it actually gets easier if you start to batch them out. If you can do multiples at a time that way you're doing a multiples of backers and then painting all the little top pieces and gluing everything together at one time. Do two to six. It's even more efficient. More efficient. And then you'll just pump right through them. Well thank you again for joining our session today. We do appreciate you joining us. If you're looking for us you can always find us over at KNGMakeit.com. You can find it at Kim and Garrett Make It on our YouTube channel. Or we have a huge Patreon following with a great group of folks. So if you're learning and new to laser crafting or you're interested in doing more door hangers we have a nice community and a Facebook page where folks go on and share what they're making. Share their tips and tricks. It's a great community.