A lot, starting with...

... images, such as:

A tank... from somewhere. Specifically and M1A Abrams tank, like the Marines use. This one came from a magazine, as I understand it. It had to be scanned first. But it had a lot of stuff that I(we) didn't want on the lid of the humidor. So, I had to clean it up, and reduce the image to:

Just the tank, and get rid of everything else.

That means you spend a lot of time using the computer, going around only the image you want and then cropping more out of the shot, until you have just the outline of what you need. Okay, finished, right? Not quite. You've only done one image. Now there's...

The emblem. Yep, the other half of the picture.

But we didn't want the entire emblem. Aside from the copyright infringement issue, the essence of the emblem is the globe and anchor. So it was more scanning and cropping, until I ended up with...

Bingo... the anchor.

It was in color, so I had to convert it to a black and white image, which meant a lot of contrast and brightness adjustments to get it just right. It took a while. Furthermore, the rest of the engraving was just text, so the only difficulty I had from here on was spelling(like "battalion" versus "batallion"--you'd be amazed). Finally, I was just about ready to put it all together. It took a little monkeying around, but I finally came up with the following arrangement:

What we wanted to start with... something to put on the lid.

And it all had to have the same darkness and contrast, and the images had to blend together properly, and be the correct size to fit properly on the lid, and around the hygrometer. And then I had to construct the actual lid, covered with Kobi leather, and stretched so that it would engrave properly. By the way, I can do the same engraving on ANY surface, including metals, acrylics... anything.



So if you want something very SPECIAL for yourself or someone else, this is the ticket.

Engravings, starting at $100.00