Frequently Asked Questions
light wave art
Corporate Gifts
Choose from over 175 Plaques, Acrylic Awards, Photo holders, and Photo-plaques that can be personalized with custom images and text. You will have the opportunity to pre-approve the artwork design and cost before your award is produced.
You can browse engravable award selections for ideas on one of our supplier’s websites at:
www.johnsonplastics.com/engraving-blanks/engraving-awards?p=1
Release your creativity: Beautiful signs can be constructed from stunning and colorful materials including acrylic, wood, and mirror. LightWave Art can laser-engrave through the back of mirrors allowing for colored images and text to be brightly displayed in the mirror. Perfect for a restaurant or home bar. Individual laser-cut characters can be as large as 20” x 32” in size.
Leather engraves beautifully. Lighter colored leathers provide a much better contrast than dark leathers. The leather to be engraved must be able to be laid flat on the laser engraver table.
Faux leathers typically do not engrave well.
LightWave Art can laser engrave cylindrical objects, like glasses and bottles, with our computer- controlled rotary device. The maximum width is about 6” in diameter.
Most woods engrave beautifully, producing near-photographic quality images. In general, the harder the wood the better the engraving.
LightWave Art can produce perfectly fitting and stunningly beautiful inlays in wood, including abalone, hardwood, and acrylic inlays.
Lathe-produced cylindrical objects can be engraved using our computer-controlled rotary device.
Any anodized aluminum engraves beautifully, including the popular aluminum water and coffee bottles. Also, custom pet tags can be personalized with photos, graphics, and text.
Also powder-coated bottles from Contigo, YETI, or HydroFlask engrave well with both text and images.
Stainless steels, copper, and bronze are metal alloys and different alloys react differently to laser energy. In most cases, LightWave Art can laser-bond black metallic inks to most of the various alloys — but some alloys will not engrave. We usually test the alloy’s engravability in a normally unseen place on the object.
Clear black marble and granite engrave with near photographic-quality results. Your favorite photo or artwork can be literally “carved in stone,” creating an enduring legacy. Spreading your image across several tiles can produce a mural of almost any size — a backsplash or an entire wall.
We work very hard to make every customer satisfied and pleased with the results of our work. Whether we use your artwork or produce custom artwork for your job, our customers always receive a photo-mockup of the design for their approval and a firm cost estimate before we begin their job.
LightWave Art has many years of experience in producing exactly the image and text our customers want. We will produce custom artwork per your specifications at a rate of $15 per hour. We always provide a price quote up-front so there are no surprises about the final price.
You can upload your photo or artwork from our website or e-mail your design or design ideas to us ([email protected]) in any of these file formats: .jpg, .jpeg, .tiff, .png, .pdf, .ai.
LightWave Art can produce stencils and templates of your custom artwork for your DIY project up to 20” x 32” in size.
We can also produce precise stencils for sandblasting using Lasertape Stencil Tape.
WOOD CARVING ARTISTRY
LightWave Art will only produce 250 of each image. Each product is engraved on the back with a unique Registration Number. A wallet-sized metal tag, engraved with the same Registration Number, is included as proof of Authenticity.
LightWave Art will be continually designing new images for their carved wood art. The first Series is of Montana Wildlife. The next two planned image series are Oceanic (whales, dolphins, otters, etc.) and Exotic Birds (U.S., Australia, South America, Pacific Islands, etc.).
We also can produce carved wood art from your color photos of your pets — dogs, cats, birds, horses, etc. Your photos can be e-mailed or uploaded on our website. The photos must be color photos of at least 4” x 6” at 300 dpi. We can accept any of these file formats for your
photo: .jpg, .jpeg, .pdf, .png, .tiff, .ai.
Add $75 to the cost of the standard sized images to cover the design time required to make your photo laser-ready. (That 5-step process likely takes more time and effort than you might think, but the results are amazing). For example, an 8” x 10” custom image would cost $170 ($95 + $75).
The art pieces are very carefully packaged with protective materials to make sure they arrive unharmed. The shipping cost depends on the image size and the destination. Shipping costs are calculated when the purchase is being made on our website.
For local buyers, the shipping costs can be avoided by arranging to pick-up your completed image at our retail outlet, Artisans on Second, 175 South Second Street, Hamilton, Montana.