Cake! magazine by Australian Cake Decorating Network August 2017 | Page 90
Step 1: Step 2:
TRACE. First you'll want to trace your snowflake
design onto your material. I would suggest
taking your downloaded snowflake file to a
place like Kinkos or Staples and have it printed
on their blueprint printer as large as you want.
I wanted a big statement, so I made mine 40"
wide. Then you can just cut it out, place it on
your piece of wood or foam core, and trace
around it to transfer your design. If you are a
lucky duck and have access to a projector, you
can also print your snowflake on a transparency
to trace it with the projector instead. I added
the dots on the printout to mark where the lights
should be based on where I ended up drilling
mine, so make sure to mark those dots when
you are tracing as well. CUT. Okay, here's one part of the process where
you can go either the less or more time-consuming
route. If you want to use foam core for your
marquee, you can just use an X-Acto knife and
metal ruler to cut out your snowflake. For a thicker
foam core sign, cut out more than one and glue
them together. If you choose to use wood for this
project instead, you'll need a jigsaw, but if you
don't already have one the good news is that
they are under $50, easy to use, and you'll have
a whole new range of wood DIYs you can tackle
from now on. Totally worth it.
If you choose to use a jigsaw, clamp your wood
(or have someone hold it) so that the portion of
the wood you are cutting hangs over the side of a
table or workbench that's about waist high. Keep
the flat metal bottom of the jigsaw close against
the top of the wood as you cut into the board,
and use the metal guide on the front of the saw to
follow your outline. Don't force the saw forward too
fast or it won't give you as clean of a cut, so just let
the saw go at its own pace. Make all the cuts that
you can get to from the outside of the snowflake,
and I'll show you how to do the cutouts near the
inside.