iPhone Icon Christmas Ornaments

After seeing this post online about plexiglass iPhone app icon ornaments, I knew I wanted a set.  But, I didn’t want to buy them online from Belgium.  Not to mention, those ones were incredibly small; they were less than 1″ by 1″.  Working at Fox Chapel Area School District gives me access to a lot of incredible technology, including a laser saw.  So I figured, why not try and make a set myself?  I figured it couldn’t really be that hard… I just needed to find a high-res photo of an iPhone (thanks, Apple press images), and cut out each icon.The process took about two or three days to perfect and several test prints.  The laser saw is able to rasterize rather complex JPGs, but the problem is that the standard iPhone icons just don’t have a lot of contrast.  They’re very similar in color and tone throughout.  We (myself and Justin Papariello, a teacher) tried printing just the plain old App Store icon, and it turned out ok.  The problem came with more difficult prints like the Weather icon.  So, as Justin had a day off, I worked on simplifying the icons.  Here’s what a few of them turned out to look like:

When he returned, I laid them all out in Corel Draw 4 and drew the rounded frame around each one in addition to the hole to put the hook through.  We ran a batch and they turned out pretty well.  Although, some dust from the plexiglass got on the mirrors, so we printed them once more.  The second time around, they turned out perfect.  Here’s what they look like, laid out:

Yes, I realize I forgot to cut out the center of the 9 on the calendar icon.  Settings and Safari were really hard to do too, so I’m pleased the laser was even able to rasterize/print them at all.  Overall, I’m really satisfied.  Here’s some pictures of them on my tree: