FREE CNC FILES FOR THE DESIGN (SHARED WITH THE PUBLIC IN INVENTABLES PROJECTS)
FREE FULL-SIZED PATTERNS FOR CONVENTIONAL WOOD WORKING TOOLS ALSO!
No one (I know) wants to rush the season and start talking about Christmas before Thanksgiving has arrived. In fact, most folks I know get irritated when they start seeing advertisements so early.
However, if you are a fellow “maker,” and are planning to sell your items at the upcoming Christmas craft shows; you’d better start in on producing items to sell right now in order to have sufficient inventory.
This is the second Downeast Thunder Creations Christmas Project for the 2018 Christmas season. It’s three different sizes of round, wood, Christmas tree ornaments. They are cut out in two pieces each from 1/8” (3mm) Luan plywood. This material used to be commonly referred to as “door skins” because it is used as the outer layer of hollow interior doors. My local lumber yard was able to get it for me and sells it for $11.75 per 4’ x 8’ sheet. The two parts are cut out and then slipped together with a very tight fit, such that no glue is needed or used.
I don’t sell these as finished ornaments. I cut out the ornaments on my cnc machine and leave them in place on the 8” x 12” sheet I cut them on. I then sell and ship the ornaments “by the sheet” and the customer has the joy of removing the pieces from the sheet, cleaning them up, and painting or finishing & decorating as they desire.
These ornaments can easily be made with conventional wood working tools if you don’t have a cnc machine. So I’ve provided full sized patterns in pdf format that you can download and print out. I recommend applying a spray adhesive to the patterns and sticking them to piece of hardboard or plywood. You can then carefully cut them out and use them as templates for making multiple ornaments.
Here’s the FREE PATTERNS download:
I put the design for CNC carving together in “Easel,” the software provided free by Inventables and commonly used with Inventables X-Carve CNC machines. Go to the Inventables web site and look under “Projects” if you would like to have free use of this CNC file. Once you have opened the file, make a copy and save it to your own account (free, even if you don’t own an X-Carve). You can then modify the design as you see fit for your use, including the size.
Here’s the link to the Inventables, “Easel” page for this ornament design:
https://www.inventables.com/projects/2-piece-ornaments-3-different-sizes
With the design saved in Easel, it’s now fairly fast and easy to batch out more of these for the craft shows. This particular item will probably be offered around $12.50 per sheet, or $30.00 for three sheets. I try to have a variety of price points, starting around $3.00 and running up to about $50.00. There are other items I make that go for substantially more money, but the more expensive items rarely sell at local craft fairs. It’s the lower priced items that sell quickly and I don’t want to have to lug out lots of inventory after the fair or show ends.
I’ll post more craft show items/projects as I put them together in the near future. I posted a couple of links below to Christmas Pallet Wood Projects I did last year:
DIY Pallet Wood Table Top Christmas Tree – https://youtu.be/Us0sWBCqPP8
DIY Pallet Wood Christmas Star – https://youtu.be/SD7WchfiqUo
Link to this year’s (2018) DTC, DIY Christmas Project #1: https://youtu.be/pTSF4QMvP-w
Many thanks to all my subscribers for participating, commenting, liking, and sharing my videos. I very much appreciate your continued support of my YouTube channel. It’s a lot of fun for me, and I hope this trend continues.
Here’s the video:
