....I really struggled with coming up with an idea.... I didn't know how to approach the technical route of making boxes or functional objects, but the other route involved drawing, which was a struggle by itself. I ended up deciding to make a tree, which was a bad idea... it required so many paths.

My small test for its support system.. decided four full trunks were better instead of one

my sketch had too little branches and I was struggling with getting the shape right

I made this by tracing over my sketch and then looking at reference photos of tree illustrations on Google images.

made the paths wider to what I thought would cut better

I got an 18 by 12" piece of clear Acrylic, and an extra just in case. My original plan was for my tree to be 4 by 9'' but I wasn't happy with the way the branches looked so I decided to go smaller to 2.5 by 7''. I was going to lasercut four of these pieces and glue them together. Last minute, I realized that since I got clear Acrylic, the glue would show in the center. I then decided to have the tree be made up of two pieces instead of four, and make a notch and a slot (using Illustrator's path finder tool) that will allow them to fit together. This way I wouldn't need glue.

My cardboard prototype:

I then lasercut the acrylic and it went well.

For the future I will definitely choose a simpler shape that does not require so many paths drawn with Illustrator. The two parts actually slot into each other really well so I've learned that slots can be much more practical and nicer looking than glue.