Crafty Christmas Gifts-the wooden ones

Every year for the past several years I've made ornaments for my family and close friends.  This year I decided to use the laser cutter down on the OU main campus.  I've been using it this year to cut quilts, but I'd never tried cutting wood.  Then when I was home over Thanksgiving, my mom mentioned that our little wooden nativity scene from childhood was missing a bunch of pieces (thanks to some dog of years past), so I decided to make some new wooden pieces for that.

First up was the ornaments.  I made all the designs using adobe illustrator, and of course the designing is the fun part.  All of them are original designs except the golf ball which was modified from an existing vector file.  I didn't have a really good feeling for how fine my lines could be an after a test cut I realized that they'd need to be much larger than I thought.  Some of them are still very fragile!

These snowflakes were the sturdiest along with the golf ball.

Since I was making one for my niece Anna, I thought I'd make one for my friend Anna, but all her "Merrys" broke off so instead of saying Merry Christmas Anna it just says Christmas Anna!

The Joy and Peace ones cut well.

For my niece Anna, it was so fragile that I backed it with another piece of wood. 

My nephew Alex's was also very fragile.  Of course it's always a good idea to give little kids very fragile things, but if they break then that's life!  They were at least in a sturdy box!

This one was for me.  It may be hard to tell, but it has the names of all my beloved pets; Pumpkin, Sam, Shooter, Missy, Bullett, Blue, Bentley, and Angel.  All have passed away now except for Blue and Bentley (who live with me), and Shooter, who was kidnapped by my parents (DAD!!) a few years ago.  It's ok-  she loves it with my parents and I still get to snuggle her when I visit.

And here they are all together!

And now the nativity scene!  My sister and I loved playing with this one as a kid,  it was always on a low table because it had sturdy, kid friendly pieces, and I was so sad when the dog ate so many bits of it!  There were no shepherds or Joseph, and only one king!  

These are the new pieces I made, a cow, an angel, a village lady, Joseph, a shepherd, and two new kings.   I cut them on the laser cutter and then painted them.

Here they are all together, I think they blend in well with the rest of the set!

They didn't have a box everything fit into either, so I found a template online for a laser cutter file to make a box with this cool hinged lid and made that too.  The pieces all just glue together and then everything fit inside very nicely!

Merry Christmas everybody!