Tutorials

Personalized Laser Cut Acrylic Keychains | Scrap Buster Project

Are you looking for something fun and creative to try? Let's make unique initial keychains out of acrylic, a font, keychain hardware and a laser-cutting machine! All you need for this project is a laser cutting machine, acrylic and a big fat font.

I used the font FATZ from the Keychain Crafts Bundle. This bundle includes 353 Designs and 4 fonts to help make so many unique one of a kind keychains and to top it off it is 95% off retail value!

Once you have font installed you will open up your editing software and type out an initial you would like as the base of your keychain. For this project I will be using Adobe Illustrator. Once you have it typed you will want to click object>expand. This will change your font into cutting paths.

After you click object>expand a pop-up will come up and you will want to have object and fill checked and press okay. After this is expanded you will notice all your letters are grouped together (this is if you plan on making multiple keychains at once.) You will want to object>ungroup.

Next you will want to make a hole in the letters that the keychain hardware will go through. I make my holes .125". I duplicate this circle and place it on the upper left hand of my letter. I make my initial letters roughly 2" tall. You can also change the fill color of the letters and circles to 'no fill' and change the line color to 'red'.

Next, I used the same font and typed out each name I would like to be on the initial.

Expand and ungroup the names and slightly space the letters apart. This will help there be less spots the acrylic may be brittle.

Next up, load your acrylic into your laser and cut.

After it is cut, you will unmask and add your keychain hardware.

Whether you’re looking for gifts for friends and family or simply want to show off your skills, creating personalized keychains with fonts, acrylic and laser-cutting machines is guaranteed make great gifts or stock your custom shop!