DIY Laser Engraved Napkin Rings
These laser engraved napkin rings are the perfect addition to your fall or Thanksgiving table setting! The napkin rings add an upscale touch to your napkins with the leatherette and the sophisticated designs of fall leaves, pumpkins, and acorns! Add these napkin rings to your table as an inexpensive but elegant way to dress up your dinnerware!
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Making these napkin rings is so easy now that I have worked all the kinks out with the SVG files! Lol! I waste a ton of material trying to create my small crafts with the laser, but the good news is, since I waste all that material, you don’t have to! I make the files, test them, fix them, test them, fix them, and then have files for you all!🤭
Also these napkin rings can be made without a laser if you don’t have one and can’t purchase one yet! If you have a scroll saw you can cut out the wood shapes, scissors to cut the leatherette, and then use a gold marker to make the designs on the leatherette! But trust me the laser is WORTH IT!
I love using the laser to make all my crafts! If you haven’t read my review of the xTool M1 laser and blade cutter, or my review of the xTool S1, you should check them out! So much information so you can determine which machine is right for you!
Ready to make some cute napkin rings and spruce up your fall table? Let’s do it!
Gathering Supplies to Make Napkin Rings
There really isn’t much you need besides a laser and whatever material you want to make them out of! Grab yourself an xTool M1, S1 or heck get the P2 if you want! Lol! But honestly, if you are good on the scroll saw, you could cut them yourself, but I am NOT! 😅
Materials:
- xTool S1 or scroll saw
- 3mm basswood or other 3mm plywood
- brown leatherette that engraves gold – I used the sheet that was included with my S1 and then needed more so I ordered this one from Amazon!
- orange leatherette – I used the sheet that was included with my M1
- gold spray paint
Making the Napkin Rings
Setting up the laser to create your napkin rings is pretty easy once the files are correctly done! Lol!
I will try to piece together all the steps considering I had to repeat them so many times, I may or may not have gotten all the pictures I needed! Lol! No matter what, you’ll be able to recreate them though, it is really easy once you get the hang of your laser!
First things first, make sure you have downloaded all the files! I try to save them all separately so you can easily keep up with what is what! And then decide which style you want to make! I made the two different styles and for this tutorial I will refer to them as the stacked ones…
and the single layer!
Here is the picture of all of them side by side so you can choose which style you like the most, or mix them as I did!
Alright once the files are downloaded, you can import them into XCS! You can also use Lightburn with the S1 which is really cool, but I haven’t tried it just yet so I will have to add those instructions once I have done it there as well!
Single Layer Napkin Rings
We will start with the single layer napkin rings only because they are a little simpler than the stacked! But both tutorials are down below! I tried to be step by step as best I could and give any tips along the way!
Cutting the Wood of the Napkin Rings
Open XCS, place your cursor over the file icon at the top left! Scroll down and select import image.
Open the Napkin Rings no engrave file to cut the wood part of the napkin ring!
Okay, a few things to note here, I was using up scrap material while making these the 18th time! Lol! So you won’t see me cut them all at once as you will most likely be cutting them! But, you will get to see how great the pin-point positioning system is at allowing you to use pieces of wood you wouldn’t normally be able to utilize!
Now, I tried these two ways, the first time I cut the wood separately, then cut and engraved the leatherette. Then I tried gluing the leatherette to the wood and cutting and engraving all at once.
I ended up liking the method of cutting them separately only because, gluing the sheet to the wood is harder, if it had an adhesive back such as the velvet I used on these ornaments, it would have worked great but having to glue it myself, there were so many areas I had to go back and glue again because there wasn’t any glue there after it cut! Lol!
One last thing, I engraved on my wood before applying the leatherette because when I originally had this idea, I was just going to make them out of wood, but then I thought about the leatherette and fell in love with that! It is a process! Lol! So just know that yours will be flat wood, but I wanted to show how cute they are even if you don’t want to order the leatherette as well!
Anyway, back to it, once the napkin rings no engrave file is open, you will want to select your material from the drop down menu, I used 3mm basswood, so that is what I selected! If your material is not listed in the drop down menu, you will select user defined material and you will have to create your own settings as the machine will not have preprogrammed settings!
Then hit the auto measure button! The machine will send the needle down and measure the distance to set the lasers focus! Make sure the needle is over the material you are measuring!
The area is already marked in the previous photos, but to mark the area, you will select Start Marking!
This pop-up will appear once you hit the start marking button! (Ignore the background picture, just look at the pop-up) Click rectangle, or whichever fits the style of area you have available to utilize!
After you click rectangle, click start marking!
Now you will move over to your machine, and move the laser module to line the cross hairs up with your material, wherever you want to cut! This is how we are able to utilize the scraps so well! Set it at the top corner!
Then hit the button on the front of the machine!
Then move the cross hairs to the diagonal corner!
Hit the button on the front again!
And now your pop up will show the rectangle you just set, pretend the one below matches! Lol! Click the end marking button!
And then click done!
Once you click done, it takes you back to the regular screen only you will have a rectangle that does not move to show you where your material sits within the machine! So line your design up inside that rectangle to make sure it cuts where you want it!
We are going to cut the pumpkins but on this piece but they all won’t fit since I am using scraps, but if you are using a new 12×12 piece, obviously they all will fit! I select everything by clicking Layer 1 in the bottom left corner, we are only cutting the pumpkins, but I set it all to cut! You will keep the output circle checked!
I will then click anywhere on the screen outside of the selection to deselect everything. Then select the rest of the shapes that we are not cutting right now, and you can either delete them, or set them to ignore so they aren’t cut!
Once you have all that taken care of, hit the green button at the bottom that says PROCESS!
Next, you will click start up in the top right hand corner!
Once you click start, the file is sent to your xTool S1 to be cut, engraved, or scored!
Click the button on the front of your machine and let the cutting begin!
Woohoo! Now repeat this for the acorn and leaf if you didn’t cut them all at once! I cut mine and engraved them, as I mentioned earlier only because I didn’t know until later that I was going to cover them! Lol! But here you can see how they look in wood in case you don’t want to add the expense of the leatherette, I think they are still really cute, especially when I painted them gold!
Now we need to cut the leatherette to be applied to the top! I used the brown to gold leatherette and the orange! I used the same settings for both so I will just go through it once!
Cutting and Engraving the Leatherette for the Napkin Rings
Same basic idea, in XCS, you will find the file Napkin Rings Leatherette and open it!
Once you have opened the file, click off anywhere off of the objects to de-select them! Then we will set our material which is the brown to gold laserable leatherette! I used this same material for the orange leatherette as well!
Make sure and auto measure your material, I forgot to grab a screenshot of that! Sorry!
Next, select layer 3 in the bottom left corner, this is the orange layer and we want to set this layer to engrave. When you select engrave, it will auto populate the power, speed, and passes for you based on the material you have selected! We have selected brown to gold leatherette so these settings are great!
Click on layer 2 which is blue, this is the one line on top of the acorn, I wasn’t sure if I wanted this cut separate from the top or not so I colored it different, but you will set it to engrave as well! Leave the preset settings where they are!
Last one, click layer 1, the black layer, which will be set to cut instead of engrave! You will notice when you click cut, there are no preset settings here for some strange reason!
Now, they may have updated by the time you see this and so the settings may be there when you click cut, but if not use these settings: Power will be set at 100%, speed set to 8, and pass set to 1! You can play around with these settings if you would like, I just know these worked! LoL!
Alright, you if you make the napkin rings just as I did, you will make the leaves and acorn tops out of brown, and the pumpkin napkin rings out of orange, so you will need to select whichever one you are not cutting at the time and either delete the ones you aren’t cutting or set them to Ignore! I clicked ignore on the pumpkins since I am going to show cutting the leaves and acorn tops!
Once you have all the settings set, objects ignored, you are ready to mark your processing area! Now the next few screen shots are from when I was cutting the leaves by themselves! I deleted the other objects from XCS when I cut them, if you do this, just open the file back up when you want to cut the others! Hit the start marking button!
Set your cross hairs!
Push the button on the front after you have set your first point (remember I am pieces photos together for this…lol)!
Now mark the diagonal corner of your leatherette!
Push the button on the front again!
Now that the positioning is set, we can end marking!
And then hit done on the same pop-up!
Now move your leaves (or whatever object you are cutting) into the marked rectangle! You can rotate them as needed to fit the marked space!
Now we are all set to engrave and cut the leaves for the napkin rings! Woohoo! Hit that green process button!
Hit start!
Now click the button on the front of your machine, and sit back and let it do its thing! Make sure to always stay by your machine while it is on because they can catch fire very easily!
*The next couple of pictures are the brown leatherette being engraved and cut but just pictures from times I cut them, not specifically from the process above!
All the cuts are done, for the single stacked napkin rings you should have two leatherette pieces and one wooden piece!
I spray painted the edges gold, since we are covering both sides with the leatherette it doesn’t matter if we get it on the fronts or backs, except the acorn! If you want the bottom of the acorn to be gold, then it doesn’t matter on the acorn either I used painters tape to protect the bottom because I stained it instead!
Using super glue, I just glued the leatherette to the wood based on which way it fit!
Glue the other one to the other side! Bam! Napkin ring complete! They are so cute!
Stacked Napkin Rings
Now to make the stacked napkin rings! It is the same as the single layer napkin rings, only you will cut a few extra wood pieces!
You will use the same files you used to make the single stacked napkin rings for the stacked napkin rings, you will just have to use one extra file to cut the larger wooden piece for the middle! This file is conveniently named, Napkin Rings Middle! Lol!
You will also cut two of the smaller wooden pieces for each napkin ring from the file Napkin Rings No Engrave! And then the same Napkin Rings leatherette file will be used as well! Since I already went over cutting those above, I will quickly run through cutting the larger middle piece!
Open XCS, run the cursor over the file icon on the top left, then scroll down and click import image! Find the file on your computer that you downloaded from me named Napkin Rings Middle! Click open!
Once the file is open, you are going to select 3mm basswood as the material!
Auto measure the distance (0.522)! Then select start marking to mark where our basswood is in the laser bed!
In the pop up, select the rectangle (if your material is rectangular such as a piece of 12×12 basswood), then hit start marking!
Now go to the laser and move the laser module to where the crosshairs are on the top left corner!
Now hit the button on the front of the machine to set this point!
Move the laser module to the opposite lower right hand corner of the wood! And hit the button again!
Now on your screen the popup will show the points you marked! You can hit end marking!
Then hit done on the popup!
That will send you back to the regular XCS screen with your material marked as a rectangle/square that can’t move!
Now select your napkin ring objects and move them to where they fit within your material! Click layer 1 in the bottom left hand corner, this will select everything, then you will set it to cut on the right side of the screen!
The preset settings are perfect! Now you will hit the green process button!
Once you hit process, it will show you what you are about to cut/engrave! If it looks correct, hit start up in the top right corner!
That will send the file to the machine!
Then hit the button on the front of the machine to start the cutting!
Now just let the machine do the work! Once it is done, this screen will show!
Take your wood pieces to make the napkin rings!
Don’t mind the small burn marks on the wood, there is a problem with the auto air assist not coming on! I am painting them anyway! This should have been remedied in the latest update!
Next you will cut and engrave the leatherette, see the single layer napkin rings for that step by step if you need it!
When you have everything cut, you can now spray paint them! I spray painted the middle pieces solid gold, and then I tried attaching the leatherette this time before spray painting the edges of the smaller pieces gold! I just glued the leatherette to each of the small pieces and covered the leatherette in painter’s tape!
Now spray paint them! I used Rust-oleum metallic gold spray paint!
Once you have all of the pieces for the napkin rings cut, engraved, spray painted, and dried, you can glue them together! I just used gel super glue by Loctite!
Flip it over and do the same on the other side!
Repeat the same process with the acorn and the leaf to make yourself the cutest little collection of fall napkin rings!
And VIOLA! So adorable, this little set of napkin rings!
Are you hosting Thanksgiving this year? If you are, do you set a full table? Let me know in the comments below if you are going to include these adorable napkin rings in your set up this year?
Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a good one!
Want to save the napkin rings for later? Pin them!
