Find a picture of the Rice Athenian Owl. The Rice Athenian Owl logo has changed over time. The most recent one is the simplest. I used a more dated one that has more complex wings/feathers.
Edit in a vector-based illustration program like Adobe Illustrator. You can't just take the RAO logo, shrink it, and expect to laser-cut it well. Many points of the RAO logo need to be adjusted. A lot of edges need to be thickened up for laser-cutting. Also, the eyes need to be tweaked - in the RAO logo, the eyes are just floating crescents. To cut something out of plastic, you need the entire thing to be one continuous shape.
Finding the right material. I browsed online for material properties of various types of sheep plastic (PVC, styrene, nylon, acrylic, etc.). I knew I didn't want the earrings to be any thicker than 1/16" inch. I used 1/16" sheets of styrene, acrylic, and nylon for testing.
Testing. Because of the delicate nature of these earrings, they have for be cut pretty slow. Even if you turn up the speed on the laser-cutter, the sharp angles and intricate curves of the RAO shape force the laser spot to hang around any given area for a relatively long time. The heat buildup will cause surrounding material to melt. This was the case for acrylic. Styrene wasn't as bad, but it produced a lot of stringy-melted-plastic (like when you hot-glue something and there's that spider-silk-esque line of plastic). For me, nylon had the best performance. I had a hunch that nylon would perform well, since material spec sheets said it had the highest heat resistance.
Many failed test-cuttings...
This one had it's feet melted rather than cut...
Editing the picture again. When you're cutting, you'll find some parts of the earring will cut better than others. I had to go back and tweak the RAO image several times to minimize melting and breaking.
Cutting. Once you've got the right picture, material, and laser-cutting settings, it's time to cut the material!
Here are a bunch of freshly laser-cut pieces:
It just looks like a solid owl silhouette. That's because laser-cutters (probably) aren't made to make these tiny cuts on such delicate parts. A lot of the shapes that are supposed to be cut out have been melted and are still attached the main part. Even after tweaking the laser settings, this is the best I could do...
Cleaning. With an exacto knife. Very, very tedious. Other than testing, this is the most time-consuming step. Basically, you got to separate all the parts that the laser cutter was supposed to cut but melted instead. Obviously, the less detail the part has, the better the laser-cutter made the cut. For simple shapes like the holes around the eyes, basically you just need to poke those parts through. For the feet of the owl (that I'm shown cutting/cleaning below), that part is kind of a bitch. Fortunately, the nylon material has such great tensile strength properties and is rather flexible.
Still, you gotta be careful when cleaning. Some parts of the earrings are very thin. I think the thinnest point on mine is around a third of a millimeter.
After cleaning the main parts off, there's still a lot to do. Since the laser spot can cause local melting, you gotta scrape off those "globs" of material to make the shape as smooth as possible.
Aftermath of cleaning...
But after cleaning, you get a bunch of nice, pretty owls, ready to be painted!
Painting. This is the easy part. Go grab a can of your favorite color of spray paint and spray these babies down! I picked a bright metallic (kind of) silver because I really wanted them to stand out. I think they'd look especially good on a background of dark hair because of the contrast.
Assembly. Go to your favorite craft store (Hobby Lobby, Michaels, Joanns, Texas Art Supply, etc.) and find their jewelry department. Find some hooks and start assembling! If you don't already have one, get a set of jewelry pliers from the craft store - it'll make the assembly process much easier.
And there we go...a completed set of Rice Athenian Owl earrings!
So, if you're a Rice girl who's graduating or know someone who is, hope on over to: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=143827832357034 to find out how you can buy a pair! As of now, I've only made 12 pairs, so hurry and order!
