Laptop Stand with Hokusai Wave

cults3d

My mom is due for a laptop stand, so I've decided to whip one up for her birthday tomorrow. I'm really thrilled with how it's turned out and I love the way the wave pattern interacts with the wood grain. Here's how my process went: My mom has always had a thing for Japanese prints since she grew up in Japan, which is why I knew I wanted to incorporate a Hokusai wave into this project. I tracked down a Creative Commons image (http://nickpoint.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/the_great_wave_off_kanagawa.jpg) and imported it into Gimp. Next, I tweaked the levels and thresholded it to get a sharp black-and-white effect. From there, I played around with it in Inkscape using the trace bitmap tool until I landed on what you see here.