I have a hard time sitting still for long periods of time and usually need something to do with my hands. When I'm feeling restless, I often sketch in my notebook with repetitions of geometric shapes. In fact, I drew this pattern (left) during the last fab class lecture, so it seemed like an appropraite shape to test on the vinyl cutter.

The process was fairly straightforward. I scanned the page and created a live trace in Adobe Illustrator (right).

Yes, you were probalby already thinking it - the shape was a little too intricate for the vinyl cutter. It mostly worked, but it did get snagged quite a few times. I also had to pull the center of the bubbles out manually with tweezers. This was an incredibly time consuming process and is yet to be completed.

I used a small portion of the image to test it, and had much more success with this scale, although the whole shape would be much too large. The machine had a hard time with my curves, and I believe this is partially due to the live trace. Next time, I might spend a bit more time with the file on the front end.

Again, I had to peel the center pieces out by hand, but it was much less cumbersome at this scale. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the end result!