An incomplete inventory of what happens when a hyperfocused chaos goblin gets her hands on a 20-watt diode (and a 2-watt IR module, because variety is the spice of laser life) and refuses to be told no
There is a moment, somewhere around 11pm, when I stand in front of my laser and ask it the same question I have been asking it for months.
"What if."
What if I put a piece of bread in there. What if I tried to engrave a spoon. What if this entirely random object I found in the back of a cabinet would, under the correct settings, become something. The laser does not answer, because it is a machine. But it also kind of does answer, because the answer is almost always yes, and also you are going to learn some things along the way.
This is the field guide. These are the things my laser has eaten. It was, as I said earlier today while feeding it another piece of acrylic, so hungry.
The Leather Era
It started, as most of my eras do, with a very specific idea I could not let go of.
Leather patches. Leather bookmarks. Tiny leather things that looked like they had been pulled out of a wizard's grimoire and dropped into the present day. The laser handled it beautifully. Veg-tan leather is honestly one of the most rewarding materials a laser can eat because it darkens into a crisp, almost-burned warmth that feels old in the right way. The shop now has a small but mighty collection of leather goods because of this phase, and I regret nothing.
What I did not expect was how much my house would smell like a medieval blacksmith's workshop afterward. That part I am still working on.
The Bread Incident
Yes, bread.
No, I am not going to explain.
Okay fine, I will explain. There is a whole subculture of laser people who engrave designs onto sandwich bread and tortillas and toast, and I had to know if it would work on my setup. Spoiler: it works. Also spoiler: the bread does not survive long enough to be useful for anything except a single Instagram story. I engraved a tiny moon on a slice of sourdough and then I ate it. That is the whole story. The laser did its job. The bread did its job. We were both satisfied.
The tortilla was honestly even more fun. Tortillas are basically edible canvases and my brain absolutely will not let this go and one day there will be a Neurospice tortilla product and I cannot be stopped.
Denim, Glorious Denim
Denim is where the laser started showing me what it was actually capable of.
If you have ever wondered whether you could engrave a galaxy onto a pair of jeans, the answer is yes, the answer is so yes, and also denim ablation might be one of the most underrated material techniques in the entire small-batch maker space. The fabric burns away in just the right pattern to leave a perfect ghost of the original color underneath, and the contrast is unreal. My skull mushroom denim entry for the Atomm Laser Everything Contest is still one of the things I am proudest of, and it lives on the homepage carousel as a permanent reminder that sometimes you just have to put a denim jacket in a laser and see what happens.
This is also the technique that got me thinking about applying ablation to other surfaces. Painted canvas. Stretched fabrics. Things that should not work, that do. The laser keeps teaching me that the rules are mostly suggestions.
A Mirror
I want you to picture me, holding a small decorative mirror, looking at my laser, and thinking "surely not."
Surely.
The mirror was a vintage thrift find with a beautiful bevel and an absolutely terrible faded design printed on the back. I figured: worst case scenario, I ruin a mirror that was already ruined. Best case scenario, I have a one-of-a-kind reverse-engraved mirror that nobody else has. I held my breath. I sent it.
It worked. It absolutely worked. The laser ate the old printed design right off the back, and the mirror got a new life. I think about that mirror sometimes when I am trying to decide whether to attempt something that seems impossible. Most things are mirrors.
An Eyeglasses Case (Yes, Really)
This one was an experiment in seeing how the laser handled a pre-finished hard case material. The kind with that smooth almost-leather texture on the outside that probably used to be petroleum products in a previous life. It engraved beautifully. The case is now significantly more witchy than it was when I bought it. My glasses live inside something that looks like it belongs in a divination scene and I am fully here for that energy.
A Spoon (For My Mom)
This one is sweeter than the rest of the list deserves to be, so brace yourself.
The spoon was wooden. A regular kitchen spoon, the kind you stir sauce with. I engraved a little cow stirring a pot of...stuff with her chosen phrase and gave it to my mom, because sometimes the laser is for chaos and sometimes it is for putting small specific tendernesses into objects that will get handled every day. Even if that means "Stirring the Shit" a bit. I had no choice when she made the comment in a coffee shop that "Laura can do it better." when looking at boring spoons with boring fonts and even more boring swirlies.
Not everything has to become a product. Sometimes the spoon is just a spoon with a phrase that makes your mom giggle when she looks at it.
The Live Laugh Love Sign of My Enemy
I cannot tell you how I came into possession of this sign. I am protecting the innocent. What I can tell you is that it was literal garbage, and I mean that with affection. The sign was internally warped, the paint was flaking with fake positivity, the typography was a war crime, and the sentiment was the kind of thing that makes a Burnout Witch break a window. It was, by all reasonable standards, beyond saving.
Reader, I saved it.
Zack sanded the wood. I masked the original lettering. I designed something significantly cursed to go in its place. I let the laser eat the old and replaced it with something that actually deserved to live in someone's house. The new sign is dark, a little funny, and tells the truth in a way the original aggressively refused to. I have considered this one of my most satisfying projects of the entire year. It is the rehabilitation arc the sign deserved.
If that does not feel like a metaphor for something larger, I do not know what to tell you.
Black Acrylic, Currently In Progress
As I write this, the laser is eating a sheet of black acrylic, and the smell is, charitably, intense. Acrylic is one of the cleaner materials for laser cutting once you get the settings dialed in, and the cut edges come out so smooth they look polished. I am working on a new run of designs that I am not going to spoil yet, but if you have been waiting for a certain kind of dark whimsical thing to land in the shop, I see you and I am cooking.
Also: I have been mixing things up by playing with the 2-watt IR module today, and the IR on acrylic is unreal. It produces this frosted, almost-internal etch that makes the design look like it is suspended inside the material instead of sitting on the surface. I have absolutely no business being this excited about a wavelength change, and yet here we are. Expect IR-engraved acrylic things to start showing up in the shop in the not-too-distant future, because I cannot leave a good optical illusion alone.
Slate, The Foundation Material
I cannot write this list without ending on slate, because slate coasters are honestly the workhorse of the entire shop. I have engraved more slate pieces than I can count, and the technique I figured out the hard way (which I will probably write its own post about because the realization was that satisfying) is glossing the slate before engraving instead of after. The contrast comes out so much sharper. The detail holds better. I cannot believe how long I was doing it the other way around.
The slate coasters are the closest thing the shop has to a flagship product, and there is a reason: they are durable, gothic, useful, and they make every cup of tea feel like a small ritual. If you have not seen the current slate collection on Etsy, this is the gentle nudge.
What I've Learned From Feeding A Laser Everything That Wasn't Nailed Down
A few things have become clear over the last several months of asking the laser "what if."
The rules about what materials you can engrave are mostly true, but they are also not the whole story. The interesting work happens at the edges, where the established techniques run out and you have to figure out the settings yourself. Most of my favorite pieces in the shop exist because I put something in the laser that nobody told me to. The denim. The leather. The slate-glossed-first. Even the rehabilitated garbage sign.
The other thing I've learned is that the chaos is the point. I am not running a factory. I am running an experimental art workshop disguised as a small business, and every product in the shop has a story behind it that involves me at midnight going "what if." That is the brand. That is why people come back. That is why Jenny, my coworker who has bullied me into writing this very blog post, requested more content in the first place. (Jenny, this one is for you. Your coaster set was eaten by the laser too. Enjoy.)
If you want to see what the laser is currently eating in real time, the shop is over at Neurospice Design Shop on Etsy. If you want behind-the-scenes process content, the rest of The Coven has more of it. If you want to know what I am going to feed the laser next, honestly, your guess is as good as mine.
The laser is hungry. The laser is always hungry. The laser is never going to stop being hungry. And that is, somehow, exactly how I like it.
