Wood Burning - Hand vs Laser (Earth-Pony Colab)

This was a fun project to work on. I want to give a special thanks to Spectty and Earth-Pony for making this possible. You guys rock!

So I approached a little while ago with the idea of a colab to compare our different wood burning techniques. agreed to let us use his wonderful piece Praise the moon.

On the left you see my rendition using my hand burning technique. On the right you see Earth-Pony's amazing laser etched piece. He really does some amazing work with that thing. We both thought it would be a good idea to log just how we did this as well. 

You can find my process here: How Rekibob Makes A Wood BurningI approached Earth-Pony a little while ago with the idea to make some comparison wood burning pieces to show the difference between my by hand technique and his laser burning technique. Then we figured it might be nice to make a break down of just how exactly we did it. So here it is folks, from concept to completion. This is how I make a wood burning piece.
Step 1: Inspiration
The first step for me is finding something that I want to burn. In this case, the piece was Praise the moon by Spectty

Step 2: Preperation
The second step is preparing everything. Below I have a picture of everything I used in putting this piece together.

From left to right
Polyurethane clear gloss and application brushesColor and Black and White prints of the pieceCarbon transfer paper
And Earth-Pony's here:  How Earth-Pony makes a Laser Etch/CutHey everyone! This was an incredibly fun project!  Wood-burning extraordinaire Rekibob approached me with a great idea for a comparative art collaboration. We'd start with the same source art, and then create our own wood version using our respective artistic approaches.  
Check out Rekibob's process here: http://fav.me/d7wdo1p
Here's the process I used to create a laser etched and cut plaque:
Original Image:
We decided to use Praise the Moon by Spectty.  Special thanks to Spectty for being so supportive in this effort! (He even provided a vector file! That made my life 10 times easier ^.^)

File Creation:
I have to prepare the image for laser cutting.  Baltic Birch doesn't afford as much contrast as a computer screen or a print, so I have to play with the image until it will look good

This was an extermely fun project that I am glad I got to work on. Let us know what you think about our different techniques!