Creating pendants with Zap

This is what I have been working on and I’m sooo excited about it! I was actually looking into getting some enamel pins done, but found you had to order a large quantity of one design with an outlay of around £100. That just felt a little risky to me, but then I found the laser cut pendant option where it was possible to get five designs done for an order of 50 pendants and for me that was a lot more exciting!

There was a choice of 3mm plywood, to a 4 mm thick maple, cherry or American Walnut. There is also a good range of sizes from 1/2 inch (I think) to 3” - maybe 3 1/2. - I can’t quite remember now. I went for 1.5 inches though which seemed a decent size without getting too big and the maple wood which was quite a light wood.

I liked the idea of statement pieces, but thought this size would be more wearable with more things. The larger the design - the more expensive it was too, so that is worth thinking about when creating designs.

Since then I have been tweaking my designs, getting them formatted properly in Photoshop and working out where to put the loops.

It has been quite some time since I did anything in Photoshop, but Zap provide you with a template with layers to place your work onto and a detailed guide of how they need the artwork submitted. The process was pretty enjoyable for me and didn’t cause any hair pulling moments!

I was however worried about the integrity of the final pendant - that is its likelihood of breaking - as it’s such a small size. I watched a few videos on laser cutting to get a better idea of the process, but without being able to play with a machine myself it’s pretty hard to judge the level of detail that can be achieved without making the item too fragile.

To be on the safe side I added some additional background to my designs which will be wood in the final item. In the above image you can see I used a browny colour behind the image and that was to give me an idea of how it’s going to look on the wood .

Some of the designs have a black background, but that is how Zap creatives prefer the image to be submitted and that area will actually show the lovely maple grain of the wood I have chosen.

Adding the loops was interesting (they won’t look that massive in the final thing) as again I had to visualise the balance of the item and how it would hang.

I have also been thinking about packaging and have been cutting out bits of paper to the size of available boxes to get an idea of the final product. It’s important to me that the product is as sustainable as possible which is why I have chosen a wooden (FSC) pendant rather than an acrylic one and have found a natural looking recycled box for it to go in.

I was happy that my work synchronised with the full moon too, as everything was decided and submitted by then. I am now waiting for things to be delivered and I can then start piecing it all together!

It should take a couple off weeks to get my pendants and then I will take them with me when selecting chains and clasps etc so that I can really see how it will all look together. I certainly don’t want to order metres of chain to find out that it just looks too heavy or just wrong in some way.

I’m excited and hopeful! I really want it to look as good as it can be so that I can get them out in the world and spread a little extra magic!