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I made these garden marker stakes as a Christmas gift for a close friend who loves to grow their own fruits and vegetables. Since every garden is different, I want to show you how to make your own garden stakes using my provided template. I chose to make them using acrylic, so that I wouldn't have to worry about them growing mold (on wood) due to the wet environment.
Start by opening the XCS software and opening the file template project provided. Select the text box next, and type in the vegetable/fruit that you want to make. I typed tomatoes, and used the Font Christmas Bright.
Next, rotate the text box by 90 degrees. Drag the text to the inner box on the stake template. Change the font size so that a little bit of the text goes beyond the center box in the stake template. I changed my size from 72 to 62. You can align the text by clicking both on the inner stake box and the text box and clicking Align at the top menu bar (do vertical and horizontal center).
Select only the stake template, both the outer frame and the inner box and click Combine and Subtract at Overlap to make the stake into a solid piece. After that, select everything and click Combine and Unite. The text and stake template should now be one welded piece.
Find a picture of your vegetable/fruit (outline/lineart with a transparent background) online and open it in XCS. You can also draw your own. I provided a tomato .png file. Resize the picture to fit on top of the stake as desired. Click on the picture and click Outline and do an Offset of 2 mm. Click on the stake and tomato outline and Combine and Unite.
You are almost ready to cut. Set the correct settings for the stake. Since I used black acrylic, I did 100/3/1. 1 pass was all I needed, you may need 2 passes. I am using the honeycomb and air assist. I engraved the picture at 100/40/1/100. You are now ready to click Process.
You are all done making your first garden marker stake. I made a custom sized gift box for my friend with the help of a box generator (https://www.festi.info/boxes.py/). This was cut on 3mm birch plywood at 100/4/1 using honeycomb and air assist.
