hey it's jen for tested here to share a project that combines two of my all-time
favorite things halloween and dioramas this is what i've been obsessing over for the past
month and i'm so excited to introduce this mini laser cut haunted house this is a model kit that
i designed and you can download the files to laser cut this and make your own at home but today i'm
going to walk through the entire design process from prototyping to iterating and how i came up
with this and we're also going to put one together so you can see the entire assembly process
and also talk about some detail and finish work you can do to really take this to the next level
so the idea first developed from this idea of a pumpkin as an enclosure earlier last year i
designed a book nook kit which is a diorama that fits inside of a bookshelf and i really like this
idea of a compact form factor where you can kind of create a scene inside of a space so i started
out with the pumpkin and there is a thing you can get now called a funkin i know it's a terrible
name but it's a carvable foam pumpkin so it's made to made for crafting and what i did was
to cut into this with a hot foam knife and figure out kind of the real estate that i had to work
with inside it's it's a fairly small space to work with but i wanted to see what size i could get so
i cut into this with a knife i used a file to kind of clean up some of the edges and have this sort
of tree filigree at the beginning of the scene and then i started making some foam core prototypes i
really like foam core as an analog before i start doing laser cutting it just helps me figure out
kind of the shapes and the geometry and actually how i want the thing to look so these are a couple
of my first examples varying shapes and levels of detail and i figured out that i wanted um
i wanted the house to have a couple different sections a few different layers of roofs maybe
a chimney and i then took the prototype foam core models took some measurements and i brought this
into illustrator which is my default uh 2d design program now i know this could be accomplished a
lot easier with cad software but i like to do things in kind of an organic way i like to sort
of draw in the computer with a tablet so i'm getting this kind of digital sketching going
and i like that process a lot better than than cad which is a lot of math and measuring um but
because of that it's a little bit of a brute force process to try to take something 3d and model it
in two dimensions a lot of make one face figure out a profile reference that off the next face
it's it's complicated but i started off by laser cutting this prototype this is this is my first
laser cut version and it's not much to look at but this is actually surprisingly complicated to solve
for how all the pieces are going to match up i wanted to hide all of the finger joints so this
came out first but i took a step back and looking at this and i was just looking at this compared to
my sketches and thinking it doesn't have a lot of personality there's not a lot of movement so i was
trying to figure out what exactly what exactly is this missing now plywood as material is it's
a bit tricky because it's flat and it's rigid how do you get that to look like organic shapes how do
you get it to have movement and i came up with the idea that maybe the walls don't need to be
perpendicular so i started messing around with the pieces going in at an angle and kind of
making these crooked edges and this is the first little miniature proof of concept that i came up
with for that there are also some other features uh the edges so the finger joints where you would
match the two sides together i found a way to hide those by making them look like they're part of the
the planks so there's some surface detail here and i made where the um where the joints go together
blend into those boards of the house so to speak so it looks like they're part of the design
i did a lot of different things with this i layered layered some pieces of the roof to
hide the tabs or the roof attaches together but i also found that if you etch underneath of that
it looks like it's hiding a big patch in the roof so lots of different ways to incorporate
visual elements that are also acting as a way to disguise how the thing was actually fabricated
once i figured out the form factor i started to have a lot of fun making all the detail pieces
so i have lots of tiny little doors and windows all these little layered sections i tried a couple
different styles some of them are bricks some of them are cobbles and once uh once all these pieces
get put together and i figure out how to make the thing once there is another entirely separate
challenge which is figuring out how to make this easily replicatable so when i put the thing
together the tolerances can be sort of close i can you know super glue things and force them into
position but when you think about making it so that somebody else can easily build this without
too much frustration there's all sorts of other considerations everything has to be streamlined
everything has to snap fit together so the parts grab and a nice positive fit i did things like to
create an outline so wherever there's a layered section there's a score line underneath that
shows you exactly where to place the next layer on top so lots of considerations that go into
making it as a kit for people to build with that in mind we'd like to show you exactly how this
whole thing goes together so i've cut all of the parts and we're going to build one from scratch
and also show you a couple different ways that you could finish this a couple different ways
to display it with lights and foliage and things like that to really take this to the next level
so these are all of the parts of the kit i have everything laid out on the table here and kind
of organized an old the first step is actually the fun part well the whole thing should be fun
actually but i always want to get right into the detail work and usually you have to like
work from the ground up but the way that this all goes together i actually get to do all the little
window pieces first so i'm going to dive into that and then these will get glued onto the layers and
then the whole thing gets assembled and there's a combination of some of this is press fit parts
and then some of them are layered to add dimension and those will just get glued on top of each other
finish gluing all of the window and door pieces look how cute they are tiny tiny tiny little
parts and i'm going to move on to gluing the thatch parts on the roof this i thought was
this is a little clever piece of design um the tabs where the roof attaches to the main wall
instead of seeing those i decided to hide them with an extra layer of thatch so it adds a little
bit of dimension and then i also etched some kind of holes so it looks like that piece is there to
patch a hole in the roof but really it's just hiding hiding my tabs and again there's outlines
on all of the sections very faint but you can see exactly where the part is supposed to line up
and that just goes right there and then i'm using some aerosolized accelerator to hold that get
that glue to set right away another consideration that i made was optimizing so like for those score
lines for example the score line goes all the way around but all of the area on the edge i don't
need i don't need to be aligned because it's then going to cut over it so i went in and deleted out
every line that does not that's like redundant i deleted every section of it to save on time
one of the parts of this that i really enjoy that i was very proud of is the the sort of layering
and dimensionality that happens and i also really like picking different uh finishes of plywood
to add a little bit more contrast so i like having the dark background and then the lighter
foreground and mixed media with the acrylic the sort of milky acrylic for diffusion this is a
proof grade material that's for forage and this comes in a couple different finishes but you can
easily use a veneer plywood and kind of mix it up to get different effects and kind of change
the whole look of the house i think it just looks it looks really neat i have a couple
panels where i've etched just a little bit of like a crack or a broken window so when
that's lit from behind it should you should be able to see that little that little detail
all right so i've prepped all of the walls every window and door is all glued together look how
cool those are and now uh the the next major step really is to press fit the whole thing together
so these parts all snap into one another the tolerances should be pretty dialed in
so i'm just going to pick up the front wall and begin attaching the side walls so this process was
challenging to say the least did you hear that snap here i'll do
it again so you can hear it it's so satisfying
yes there it is that is so
sad when it works it's so satisfying when it works it's so hard to get it to work
that is the sound of relief so this is where you can see
things get a little complicated because the walls here are slightly crooked so that when
you look at the house it sort of caves in towards you towards the viewer at the front
but it's not just this way this wall also has an angle so you've got this this angle going
this way and this angle going this way so you've got this weird acute angle on the inside i can't
describe for you how complicated it was to figure that out as a lot of referencing of
different profiles but it works uh and it's not something that you typically see in laser cutting
victory
here is the main house structure all assembled no glue needed and i'm going to attach this to
the base just to lock everything in position and i have a couple options i made two variations on
this depending on how you plan to display it so for one version you can attach the house to the
base and you can have a very sort of slim profile all the way around so you can see that it doesn't
it doesn't really extend out too much this is where the staircase will go and on this option
i've included in the kit uh some of these little spikes these are like little floral picks and if
you want to attach this to some foam or some moss or something in some type of diorama arrangement
you can use these spikes and these will press fit into the bottom of the base just like this
like that and then you can have the whole piece
poke stick into your foam if you want to do this as a table top display you would simply
not use the spike and there is a trace on the bottom piece here so you actually create a a two
layer base and then you would stack this up and have a nice a nice table top presentation there
i'm gonna go with the spikes for this one because i think i'm gonna put this into a
larger kind of more organic diorama
okay so we have a finished haunted house this is the completed kit with all the parts there's
a couple little scenic elements that you can add in different ways you could finish right here this
can you can put some lights inside i added a few little details i don't know if you can see this
from the front but i put some little silhouettes in some of the windows there's like a cat there's
some creepy figures in there so you can light this in a couple of different ways i found these
colored tea lights there's also little strings of fairy lights that you could tuck up inside there
the lighting really adds an extra touch and if you have the frosted window panes you can get
that kind of diffusion and create some silhouettes and some cool lighting effects you could also do
kind of like a backdrop light and then also the interior light which i think looks really cool
here inside the pumpkin i also cut a couple of additional trees to kind of fill out the rest of
the scene it is surprisingly hard to work on a round shape on the inside but because it's foam
you can cut into it and kind of poke stuff into the walls and fill that in that way i have another
idea that i think is gonna look really cool um and i've had this thing for a while it is a
decorative lantern this is for like candles and i've had this had this for a long time what i've
done is i removed the glass panes and i cut new ones out of acrylic and i just used like a a lot
like a score line on the acrylic here to get some detail i just added a little spiderweb you could
put some some cracks in the glass some different effects and i want to create a whole scene
with the haunted house inside this lantern using some of these floral decoration stuff these are
these are really neat i found these at michael's um kind of like a foliage mat but the scale is
perfect for miniatures it's like made for this there's even dirt flocking on the back just like
fantastic so i think what i'm gonna do is create kind of a layered sort of landscape using some
foam to fit inside of the lantern attach the house using those spikes to poke into the foam
and then i'll dress the rest of the scene with some of these little little headstones some some
fence pieces and kind of build out this little this little landscape with the haunted house
so
do
i can hardly contain my excitement these far exceeded my expectations they came out so cool
and i feel like my laser cutting skills have leveled up just a little bit uh from the book
nook to creating something like this where i've managed to take flat rigid material and
make it look like it has life and spirit i mean look at that doesn't that house just
like it's alive i really like this pumpkin form factor for halloween having this little space
you can peer inside with the tree filigree at the front but i'm also really partial to this
mossy landscape this kind of 360 diorama with the lights inside i think it looks so cool i hope you
get a chance to make one of these for yourself i will have the files and assembly instructions
on my etsy shop uh it will also be available in the glowforge catalog so for glowforge users
go on over there and check it out you can download it'll have all the settings and
everything that you need i hope this has got you in the halloween spirit it certainly has
for me i'm feeling extra spooky and really excited happy halloween everybody we'll see you next time
so
you