Decoration

Slotted Christmas Ornament test

Andrew
Finished Christmas ornament
Finished and assembled Christmas ornament

Last year our team made (well, I made, but the team hosted the decorating party) slot-together Christmas trees for our internal clients.

We wanted to see if there was something else to make them in 2015, so we brainstormed over email. Someone presented a sketch of a Christmas ornament shaped item, and knowing I can whip out this sort of thing I went ahead and made the prototype. Plus, I hadn’t actually cut anything from this particular shade of red 1/8″ acrylic, so it was a good test.

In the end we didn’t do anything because of heavy workload in December, but that’s how it goes sometimes.

Oh, and I hope the Brand folks at work don’t see sad Inky made from the scrap cutouts. It is definitely not on-brand!

Cut out and waiting assembly.
Do not leave the extra pieces with a designer late at night.
Remains of the protective tape.
In disarray.

 

Room signs for kids

Room signs for kids

Andrew

Painted sign - EleanorEvery kid needs a sign on his or her door, and while they are little, might as well make it cute (since there will be “Parents, Stay Out!” signs soon enough).

These are actually the second round of room signs – at our old place, and with one kid, we made a similar sign with the same decals. But now with two kids, I decided to make two brand new copies…

A scan of the dragon fly wallpaper decals was traced in Illustrator and each shape was incorporated into the background. Text was added, naturally. Check out a PDF of the file here: Room_signs

Cutting was performed on the laser cutter at Nova Labs, out of 1/8″ hard board.

I primed the pieces with white spray paint, and mom did the painting (including glitter spray paint) with some “help.” 🙂

Christmas Tree cut outs – decorated version

Andrew

Finished Christmas Decorations

The big plan for the Christmas Trees from early December was to let my kids decorate them. We later decided to give them to all of the grandparents for Christmas; I was able to snap a few photos before we wrapped them and hit the holiday road.

Here they are. I’ll let you guess which one the toddler decorated, vs the 4-year-old!

 

Finished Christmas Decorations Finished Christmas Decorations

 

Slotted together Christmas Trees and Snowflakes

Andrew

A collection of laser cut slot-together Christmas TreesA week and a half ago, I created a slotted together Christmas Tree decoration as a test. My older daughter saw it and asked if she could decorate it, but I couldn’t let her as I needed it for work. Given how easy it was to create, I went ahead and made her several more to color.

These were laser cut out of not-quite 1/8″ lite plywood. The Christmas Trees are 6″ tall, and the Snowflakes are 4″ tall. The flat ones were jammed into the open spaces on the sheet of wood so I didn’t waste as much material.

The items were downloaded from Shutterstock as they had several vector graphics containing multiple Christmas Trees, so I’d only need to buy one image. Same with the snowflakes. I looked for ones with simple, symmetrical designs.

If you want to make these, here are the steps (it’s really simple):

  • Size the tree to whatever you want in Illustrator, Inkscape, whatever…
  • Measure the thickness of your material.
  • Make a rectangle that is half the height of your tree, and where the width is the thickness of your material (in my case, 3″ x .11″).
  • Center align the tree and rectangle.
  • Duplicate the pair of items.
  • On one, ‘bottom align’ the tree and rectangle. On the other, ‘top align’ the items.
  • Use the pathfinder options to remove the rectangle from the tree, and you’re done.

Go past the jump for more photos:

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Prototype Christmas Tree gift

Prototype Christmas Tree gift

Andrew
Slot-together plywood Christmas tree
Assembled prototype of a desktop Christmas Tree decoration.

It looks like this is the second post in a row with work themed projects (you just don’t see all my draft posts!) Anyway…

Last year my team gave our internal clients Christmas cards to say thank you for working with us over the year. I thought we could step it up a bit with a company-themed gift/decoration to go on their desks this December.

This is a prototype of a laser cut, slotted Christmas Tree decoration. Made of 1/8″ birch plywood, I created the design in Illustrator. The shape is intentionally simple as we are going to cut or engrave some of our graphic resources on the final pieces. My wife is advocating for red acrylic, so we’ll see what happens after we discuss at work.

Stay tuned for the final version in the next 2 weeks or so.

 

Laser cut Christmas tree decoration
2 flat pieces that will slot together to make a Christmas tree decoration. This is just a prototype made of 1/8″ plywood.