The Coral Door from the Waccamaw Neck Branch and the Mushroom door from the Bookmobile
The event announcement posted on social media.
The Georgetown County Library System is rolling out Fairy and Gnome Door kits to all branches and the bookmobile this week. Though not explicitly games related, fairy doors are certainly game adjacent. They can be used as props in RPGs, wargames, or maybe even as part of a board game. I have already started working on an escape room using fairy doors.
Even though it appears the end of the pandemic may be on the not-to-distant-horizon we are still trying to find ways to connect to our community. One of the big tools that has helped with this has been our Glowforge laser printer. From it we have created three significant projects, including last summer’s ocean creature themed mobile, and our gingerbread house. Both made of Baltic Birch plywood, not gingerbread; we do not recommend eating them.
This spring Amy King and I, (Department Managers at the Waccamaw Neck Branch Library) brainstormed a project full of whimsey and creativity. The idea started simple “Fairy doors for books”. The next thing we knew, as is the way of things, it had completely spun out of control. While we’d offered our laser cut projects to other branches before there had only been moderate uptake. This time we wanted it to be different. We wanted to show that though each library is different, we are all still part of the same family.
In the project’s final form each library would have a unique door to give to their patrons. In that kit all of the other libraries would be represented by charms that reflected their own theme. The coastal Waccamaw Neck Branch Library had a coral framed door and was represented in each kit by an anchor while the Carvers Bay honey pot was represented by a fairy bear on each board. Andrews had a train, and Dewey, Georgetown’s mascot bunny, was present as well. To match the leafy and flowery art concept sketches provided by the brand new Southern Georgetown Community Library they were present on each board as a butterfly.
Chris Bell and I created art for six different kits, one for each branch in the system including our bookmobile, with some elements based on amazing sketches provided by library staff. Each kit has a different theme, a sign for that library, a fairy key, and charms representing all six different branches in the system. Each door has a layered doorframe element to help them seem more 3d and substantial. The laser cuts were made from SVG files which were created in Inkscape, or Adobe Illustrator, depending on who was doing the work. Chris is proficient in Adobe Illustrator, while I was working at becoming proficient at Inkscape.
The final door and supporting charms were all cut out using our Glowforge. Red lines mean cut, the tiny blue mean don’t cut, and the black lines are engraving or scoring to give patrons an idea on how to decorate. This project cost us about 125 hours of manufacturing of the laser cut boards, plus about 20 hours of additional Glowforge cleaning and maintenance. These numbers don’t include the non-trivial design and prototyping time, which we were not tracking but may have been upwards of a month.
To make the kits easier to prepare and distribute all of the wood door and charm elements are attached to the wooden frame by tabs. This means we don’t have to sort all the laser cut bits in addition to the other elements of the kit. We kept the tabs super small so the patron can pop out the bits when they are ready. On a previous project we had a patron paint everything then pop the bits out and they reported that worked rather well.
Amy and Katie turned our project into something more than cool bits of laser cut wood by organizing additional crafty bits and adding them to the bags. This started with filling thousands of little tubs with a variety of colors of paint, including some that was glow in the dark but also meant other decorative elements like buttons, colorful stones, glitter glue, and paint brushes. It wasn’t until we had the bags filled and set up all at once that the full scope of the project was really evident. Also, I have no idea how many hours of work they put into getting this organized, but it was a significant endeavor.
Once everything was ready, on the Thursday before the launch, Amy and Katie packed up all of the kits destined for other libraries and took them to our main location in Georgetown. From there they would be dropped off at their respective branches by our library courier on Monday, March 22nd.
As of March 22, 2021, a limited number of these kits were made available for free to Georgetown County Library System patrons, and they can get the kit from their library. While we don’t know for certain what demand will be, patrons who visit their local branch this week should be able to pick them up. Eventually the Friends of the Waccamaw Library may offer them in the FOWL store, or as part of their garden tour fundraiser, but if you are in Georgetown County, SC you can get one for free now at your local library.
At this time the files are not available for purchase, though they may be made available for free or by a donation to the library in the future. Click through the link to see more pics of the process and get a better idea for the scope of the project.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/P6j6sKhSiX86duyr7
Let me know how you’ve used laser cutting in any of your school or library programming.
-Donald Dennis
The Games in Schools and Libraries blog and podcast are produced in association with the Georgetown County Library System and with the help of Inverse Genius.
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