Make your own LED "CHUANG HUA" (Chinese folk window deco)

窗花 is a traditional Chinese folk paper-cutting art that involves intricate designs for decorative patterns that are affixed to windows. They are commonly used during festivals and ceremonies to bring good luck and joy.

During these festivals and ceremonies, families would get together to come up with creative designs, and it is often a fun family activity to cut these out.

I never had the intricate fingers to maneuver scissors ✄ precise enough to cut out the real complicated ones. That requires many hours and years of practice.

During my artist residency at Fuse 33 Makerspace in Calgary, Canada; I was introduced to all kinds of laser-cutters, hence, had a fun improv afternoon to create my own Chuang Hua.

Step 1:

Eat some "Old Dutch" ketchup potato chips to sprinkle yourself with some Canadian flavor and vibe.

Step 2:

Do a material test with the laser cutter!

For laser cutters, the settings are all the magic for a successful project. Different materials have different speed, max power, min power, air/no air settings. And to "get it right", requires trial runs.

The software that we used is called "Light Burn", which does layout, editing, and control for the laser cutter.

With this test on the craft paper we want to use, we decided to go with 70 speed, 50/25 power as a starting point.

Step 3:

I found some open source non-copyrighted designs on the internet. There are many by searching "Chuanghua" in Google. (Chuang窗=windoww🪟, Hua花=flower🌼)

Then drag it into Light Burn, trace it to turn it into vector, and load it to the machine! Okay - looking at laser cutter at work can be very mesmerizing, here's my joyful face.

Step 4:

Ta da! Here's dragon!

Step 5:

I decided to add some customization to the design, so I thought wouldn't it be cool to make a family version that I can share with all my family members during Chinese New Year.

I have a "family sigil" done as a seal imprint from a while back. A seal in an East and Southeast Asian context, is a general name for printing stamps and impressions thereof which are used instead of signatures in personal documents, office paperwork, contracts, art, or any item requiring acknowledgment or authorship.

The one I had made looks like this, which means "The Zeng Family" altogether.

The direction of reading the text is from right to left, vertically down. So we have

• Top right 曾 (zeng)
• Bottom right 府 (fu)
• Top left 门 (men)
• Bottom left 第 (di)

I found another traditional Chuanghua design that has the 4 characters' layout:

And then Shannon helped me with a remix/fusion of these elements, And now we have the vector file to turn digital into physical!

Our 1st piece was not successful and that's where I learned about "stencil font"

After adding "anchors" to the characters, then we have a unique customized family chuanghua.

Step 6:

We were on a maker roll, and since Shannon is the "LED & Laser" guy, we decided to try engraving this on acrylic and add LEDs to this 😎

We engraved this on a 6mm transparent acrylic.

Built a quick frame to house the LED strips.

And here's our final product after 4 hours of improv hacking and making.

Blinky ✨ window flower, inspired by Chinese 🇨🇳 tradition, digitally fabbed in Canada 🇨🇦 🥰

Credit and Inspirations

I want to specifically recognize my mother for being the initial inspiration for this creation. She was one of the Corps de ballet in the "Chuanghua Dance" from the famous “The White-Haired Girl” revolutionary ballet.

The dancers would hold 2 pieces of Chuang Hua, 1 in each hand, in the scene of Spring Festival celebration. However, the story goes that she always lost her props at the last minute and came on stage with only 1 piece of Chuang Hua.

My mother has been a left shark all her life, as an artist. Love you, mom!