With the New Year, Comes New Changes

Not quite on the New Year, but we've decided to re-brand to a name that better reflects the products and services we offer.

"Geek & Gaming"

'Lacer's Edge' as the store's name has always had a mixed feeling to me. On one hand, it included one of our last names in the company, but on the otherhand the name went over most people's heads. And honestly, I can't blame them one tiny bit.

The name was meant to be a play on "Laser's Edge", toying with our name in place of laser, but this just caused confusion when speaking the name aloud. While easily bypassed, and not an awful thing, the larger problem was that the name didn't speak to our actual product line. Nothing about Lacer's Edge said that we focused on tabletop gaming products as our primary product.

So instead, now, we've switched over to "Geek & Gaming", a name that not only represents our target audience, the products we make, but is easy to understand and memorable. It also lent really well to the incorporation of our logo, the Ampersand Phoenix, which holds significance to us in our lives, which gives it our personal touch.

The Ampersand Phoenix is designed and copyrighted by me, and I'm proud to call it our new logo.

Along with the new year, there is a large assortment of new tabletop products being designed and planned for release, so stay tuned for them!

New Lightbox and Photography Progression

I'm not a photographer. I have no experience beyond fiddling with settings and seeing what changes--I've read no literature nor taken any lessons (Well, beyond a first year photography class in High School that had us using film cameras and pin-hole cameras we made ourselves.).

That leaves me having to learn as I go, with our product photography. James Lacer, our behind the scenes guy of Lacer's Edge [And from whom the play on words comes from], thankfully has a very nice camera that I utilize for the photos.

Starting out I just took photos outside. This was when Star Glade Crafts was open and selling Clay jewelry. All I knew was that taking pictures inside wasn't working. Flash? Not a chance. It made everything look disgusting. So I used good ol' nature to be my light-source.

Here's how that looked:

The problem is that I was a slave to the weather. I need to take photos and it's raining outside? Oh. Too bad. The sun also wasn't great for the products I was making, and I had to be very specific with how I angled and positioned each charm.

Once I started working on Lacer's Edge with our laser cut jewelry I knew I needed another solution. I was working on a very tight budget, since everything at the time was coming from my own pockets to get the store up and running. So I made my own light box!

That resulted in pictures like this:

And, really, they're not awful. But my inexperience along with not having proper equipment (I was using two desk lamps as my light source, for reference....) resulted in images that, even after light editing, just weren't up to par and ended up over-exposed. Heck--a couple of our current pictures are from when we were using the handmade light box. They're getting redone very shortly.

A few months ago now, I actually bought a light box. I thought 'Bigger is better' and got a 24" folding cube light box, that came with lights.

Bigger is not better, unless the product you're photographing is also larger.

The lights that came with it don't reach far enough inside of the box to illuminate the object as well as I wanted, though that was able to be fixed by slowing the shutter time. It resulted in pictures like this:

Not bad, eh?

Well I'm now to the point where I need a more versatile photographing environment that I'm not going to be limited by how excessively large (for what I'm photographing) the box is plus room needed for the lights.

I heard about a product called Foldio 2. It's a [very] lightweight plastic folding light box with diffused LED strip lights situated on an outer lip that have adjustable brightness. And it's only 15"! It's actually rather fantastic, and I'm thrilled with the final result, minus some issues with the lights flickering off every couple of minutes that I need to look in to.

As with any new photography setup, there was some fiddling with settings to get the colors correct (since I wasn't using LEDs before, the color profile was completely off). After several test photos, we got to a good point... here's what that looked like:

 

So now we're in the process of re-doing our photos to be a more unified appearance for a cohesive looking storefront!

Cthulhu!

Yep, our latest design is now live and available, and this time's it's Cthulhu! Or rather a little chibi version of the awe inspiring and fearful god Cthulhu.

This box is a trading card game deck box, designed to fit 60 sleeved Magic the Gathering cards or 90 unsleeved MTG cards.  Each purchase allows you to customize the lid with text of your choosing!

This box is available for sale here!

da Vinci is now Live!

Well, the box we designed with his sketches and hand writing is now live and for sale, at least.

That's right! It's finally here!

You can check it out here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/224024498/da-vinci-drawing-sketches-keepsake-dic

It's also possible to customize the box in various ways.

Aside from that, we're still working on perfectly our other designs, and getting them ready to go live as well.

Deck Boxes

I'm a big fan of card games, especially Magic the Gathering... into which I have sunk hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours. In my youth I even played with Pokemon cards, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Digimon.

I still play Magic the Gathering, and have always wanted fancy deck boxes. Well I'm about to make my own dream come true! I'm designing a set of MTG themed boxes, as well as misc themes for deck-sized boxes.

One style in particular features the various manas from MTG. The front of the box has a panel behind the top layer of wood, painted with the color of mana, with a circle on the top layer engraved with the mana symbol.

 A preview of our WIP, picturing the black engraving on the wood, and the panel behind that painted in white.

I plan on making a deck box version of our previous designs (Hobbit, da Vinci, and Steampunk) incorporated into this box type. Because I'd LOVE to have a da Vinci style deck box for my blue/artifact proliferate deck.... it somehow seems fitting.

I may have a version which instead of painted wood, has colored acrylic.


Have questions comments? Feel free to let us know! You can get in contact with us directly at LacersEdge@stargladecrafts.com.

Wood Choices

 We use Cherry Wood for most of our products, but why? That reason is really simple! Of all the woods we've tested, cherry wood is the best all around.

First off, it's gorgeous. The wood has a natural red tint to it, with a subtle golden luster. Both the red and golden luster intensify when a clear lacquer is applied, while the red and gold will remain subtle and pale with just a polyurethane applied. We get the best of both options, depending on the application! We like using a polyurethane for jewelry, as to not darken it severely keeping it a neutral for all outfits. We use lacquer for decorative pieces like our boxes to make them really pop in their surroundings and give them a refined appearance.

It's burn color. This wood's burn color is a dark red/brown to brown, which contrasts perfectly with the luster and color of the wood. It has a high contrast, compared to other woods, resulting in a clearer engraving. Maple burns well, but the colors are too yellowed in appearance.

Hardness. It's far from the hardest wood out there, but it still takes a lot to break things made with this wood. You pretty much have to be trying to break it, to do so. It's medium hard wood, so it's still easy to work with, when engraving/cutting it, while still holding its durability as a finished product.

Smell. Smell of course plays a factor in what wood we've chosen. Some woods can be offensive to the nose, such as certain pines. Others are very appealing like Cedar. Cherry wood has a very neutral wood smell, that is not offensive nor particular odorous, as to not deter people who don't care for woody smells like cedar.

Grain. The grain in cherry wood does not carry high contrast, as other woods like walnut, cedar, or tigerwood. This allows for designs to be etched into it without the grain messing up with the contrast of the engraved image. This also means that most of our products are nearly identical. There will be some very minor grain striping, as occurs in almost all woods, but it will be minor.


Our current wood choice covered, we do plan on making some of our boxes from cedar! Cedar is one of my favorite woods aside from cherry. I love the smell, the color, and the burn color. The difficulty is finding workable cedar. A lot of cedars are brittle, soft, and lose a lot of moisture after being cut, causing them to bend in a way you didn't intend. This makes them particular difficult to actually work with, though we plan on having certain products available using this wood type.

Behind da Vinci

I've teased in my previous posts about the da Vinci box, but never posted any pictures. So to make up for it, this post will be all about the da Vinci box, some more teasers, and a bit of "Behind the scenes" for this box in particular.

Origin

This box was designed for my partner in crime, James Lacer, for whom the business is named, and my boyfriend. I wanted to make something special for him. He has a da Vinci picture hanging in our back room, which really looks fantastic, and that he likes a lot. Inspired by that, I designed and made him this box. He has the first iteration of this box, made especially for him with a personal message on the inside.

Design

The box's structural design was simple enough--it isn't an elaborate design like the steampunk box or the Hobbit box. But it's small and very sturdy.

I would like to take a moment to say that da Vinci's sketches are actually surprisingly difficult to come by in decent resolution. This made the creation of this box remarkably trying. There were many failed attempts at rendering images usable. This alone made this box's overall design more difficult to achieve than the other two boxes.

That aside, I'm very pleased with the final outcome, which I'll finally share a few teasers of!

Behind the scenes

If you've been wondering or curious about what goes on in designing these boxes, look no further! Here's a few images displaying what it looks like before it gets etched.

Here's an image showing a glimpse of one of our short sides, shown finished in one of the above images.

A quick little teaser of the lid image, and the side that you haven't gotten to see yet! (The text at the top that's cut of says "Leonardo da Vinci")

Each images shows a quick glimpse of the shape that our cutouts takes, making them fit together like puzzle pieces.

Did you know, that a single engraving can take up to 45 minutes? Depending on the speed that the machine is set to, and how much work the laser actually has to do.
Our most complicated box can take up to 4 hours to complete, from etching, cutting, sanding, assembling, and finishing with a varnish.



Like our work? Let us know! We always want to hear from you. Frequent updates on our products and methods are published to this blog, so be sure to follow us.


As always, these products will be available at in our Esty store not long from now!
Want to know when they're available? Be sure to follow this blog and like our Facebook page, both of which will announce them for sale immediately after they're made available.
Finally, you can get in touch with us directly at LacersEdge@stargladecrafts.com
We love hearing from you, and any suggestions you may have!