Evaluation

I think this project i have managed my time wel, my final piece is fully complete and considering i have never produced work of this type before i am pretty pleased with the outcome. I think my coasters and placemats do lack in the terms of tidyness but i was having major difficulty with the laser cutter and finding the exact material i wanted, so i had to find a substitute which didnt work quite as wel as i expected.
In future i think i could maybe experiment more and find more than just one material or an alternative that works just as wel so that i have something to fall back on incase it fails.

Coasters and Placemats in Use

These are my coasters and placemats shown in use, as they would look with plates, cups and cutlery placed correctly.

Development

After mounting my print onto my chosen green card, i mounted them both onto my wooden coaster i used a clear, strong all purpose glue to do this. Once it was dry i dotted the same glue into the corners of dry point acetate and covered the top of my design to avoid anything rubbing the fabric away. To finish it off i added a grip material to the bottom so it doesnt slip when in use.

Development

As my laser cut cotton wasnt stronge enough to remain on its own, iv had to go in soearch of a colour card to mount my work to, not only to strengthen it but also to be seen through the laser cut areas (leaves). Green seemed appropriate but also worked well with the brown and blue being used in my design already. I managed to narrow my choices down to three different shades, being these three.
top left; the colour is a very dull shade of green and seems appropriate considering the theme but perhaps a bit too light?
top right; a better shade, alot darker suits the theme.
bottom; very bright grass green, contrasts with my work, is this what im looking for?

Final Piece

These (my coasters) are images of how the lino combined with the laser cut frail cotton turned out, the first print, as you can see, did exactly what i imagined it would do and tore out a large area of my work. The second one was done in exactly the same way only with more care. After seeing how delicated the prints are i think i will need to not only mount them onto card for more strength but also cover them in acetate or glass as a reality check, if they were to be used as coasters and placemats they wouldnt last very long at all.

Final Piece

Another cut was done using the calico setting but arranging my design so that half of the leaves were engraved, the other half cut so that i got a variety of textures. Im not overwhelmed by the outcome but time is getting tight and the laser cutter is hard to get to, so to avoid my design freying of ruining further i have thought about using card beneath it to sturdy it a little, my only concern which is quite major is that when i use the lino to print onto this im afraid it will take my design with it because of how delicate it is. Iv cut a few of each of the coasters and placemats so i can test some before making final decisions.

Final Piece

These are my attempts at Laser Cutting for my final coasters and placemats, i found a cotton material in a dark brown i laser cut my design onto paper first and it appeared to work wel apart from having to delete a few doubled layers. I put the cotton into the laser cutting machine and started the cut. I changed the material setting to light cotton before hand and the first example here is how it turned out. The laser cutter barely engraved into the fabric even though it was set to cut-through, so i changed the settings to calico because its a slightly heavier fabric than cotton. The second image here is my calico-set laser cut cotton, it cut through far too much making the cotton frey and the design began to fall apart, this left me in a bit of a situation considering these are the only settings even close to what i needed.