Needed materials: 1) A vector-based graphics program. Warning: This technique may impress your boy/girlfriend. Here are all the steps I took to alter the letters and package my gift. It would take a very sharp knife, a very steady hand, and a lot of patience, but it's a nice alternative since not everyone has access to laser cutting equipment. Also, a laser cutter is nice, and very effective, but after altering type in the way I've outlined here, you could cut the letters out by hand. In fact, the usefulness of having a laser or stencil-friendly version of a font was so novel, I started working on an OpenType version called Stencilano that is available for free beta download now.
It seemed a great opportunity to test out a few techniques, and the result was a stylish success. It started with a present for my father, then a present for a friend, and a wedding present, and this example is based off of a package of fashion show schwag that I gave to someone. There are a lot of "stencil fonts" out there to be had for free, but a lot of them are pretty limited stylistically so I have been working with creating "laser-safe" versions of other more decorative, less industrial fonts. I've been working on the design for a few art-objects that need laser-cut letters, and decided it would be good to prototype some letters first, to get a sense of what's required. This is a simple set of instructions for anyone with access to a laser cutter on how to use a vector-based graphics program to alter text in such a way as to make it laser-cut friendly.