Laser cut state maps and state ornaments

1. TopWalnut, 3 mmInterstates and highways cut as pieces, held by a band that follows the state edge
2. LandBirch or maple, 3 mmState-shaped plate, lakes cut out, main roads engraved, heart pin on the home town
3. WaterBlue acrylic, 3 mmSolid state-shaped base that shows through every lake

Open Size & shape and pick a state from the US states list. MappSmith has all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, drawn from public-domain US Census cartographic outlines. The outline is fitted to your plate with a latitude correction, so a northern state does not come out stretched sideways.

The state outline does three jobs at once. It clips the map, so nothing prints or cuts outside the state. It becomes the through-cut around the piece. And it is the shape the 3D preview extrudes, so the render you send a customer is the shape they get.

A whole state is big. Local streets that look great on a city map turn to dust at this scale. On very wide frames MappSmith already leaves out ponds, small streams and secondary roads because they are too small to cut. Build the inside from the big, recognizable things:

• Interstates and highways. One road group, one width, so a highway and its ramps cut together. This is the skeleton people recognize.
• Lakes and rivers. Water is the instant read. Cut the lakes out of the land layer so the blue base shows through.
• A pin on home. Pins come as Star, Heart, Hexagon, Diamond, Triangle, Compass rose or North arrow. A heart on the home town is the classic state gift.
• A name and a year. Put it in the frame band or on a name bar so the letters don't fight the roads.

Keep cut roads thick enough to survive. Kerf runs from about 0.2 to 1 mm depending on process and material, and features thinner than the kerf are simply lost. A state-scale highway at ornament size is a thin line, so engrave it on small pieces and save cut highways for wall sizes.

For ornaments, cut the state outline at 3 to 5 inches and engrave the inside. The xTool hometown ornament project uses 3 mm basswood plywood with base and top layers, and xTool even sells a 50-state ornament file set, which tells you the format is proven. The difference with MappSmith is that your customer's town, roads and lakes are real, not clip art.

Use Sheets to lay a batch of state ornaments on one sheet of stock. A 12 x 20 sheet of 3 mm Baltic birch runs about $3.06 in a 20-pack, so the wood in one ornament is pocket change. Your time on the file is the real cost.

Searches for "state ornament" peak in November. Ornament searches in general jump in mid-November and peak in the first week of December. List your state designs in September and October so they are live before buyers start looking, and set a clear order cutoff.

1. 01Make one master per state you sellSave a project per state with your house style: materials, band width, fonts.
2. 02Swap the pin and the name per orderCenter the map on the customer town, drop the heart, retype the name and year.
3. 03Batch on a sheetAdd the ornaments to a sheet with your stock size, margin and spacing, then download one file.

Every state has its own page below with places worth mapping and the reasons they sell. Start with your own state, like Minnesota or New York. Road and water data comes from OpenStreetMap, so credit "© OpenStreetMap contributors" on your listing and packaging. See map attribution.