Hand-Painted Wood Ornaments

Rudolph and penguins and polar bears, oh my!

I decided a while ago, back when I posted my first post on using a laser cutter, that I was going to make more wood ornaments.  I realized a few days ago that I pretty much abandoned my blog because I was off lasering and painting and doing all the things.  So I’m back to give a quick update.

Since that post, I’ve made several wood ornaments with the goal of selling them towards the end of the year.  So far I have 4 designs done and a dozen or so of each of them made and pretty much ready to go.

I’m not going to lie though, it’s getting harder and harder to finish some of these.  I didn’t realize the toll it would take to stare at Christmas stuff just about every day for months.

 

And, of course, I couldn’t just do a simple design like the original deer I made.  Each layer was a solid color, glued together, paint the outside and lacquer the whole thing.  No, I had to design (or license designs) ornaments that meant sitting here with a detail brush painting little eyes, painting designs on scarves, and painting a thousand tiny pieces.  They may look simple, but they’ve been taking about 2 weeks to to complete  each design from start to finish.

I just finished the Rudolph design yesterday so this week I will need to come up with another design and start cutting out the initial prototype.  Cutting, painting, make changes, cutting new versions… it takes a lot of time.  But, by next weekend, I’ll hopefully be painting the next batch.

I’m not complaining though, I’m just in the painful part of building a catalog of products.  I really do enjoy popping on a documentary and painting them once the design has been locked in and I’m in assembly line mode.

I’ll design and make a bunch more ornaments over the next few months.  Then I’ll have to start coming up with little hangers and packaging for them.   I just hope people like them and that I sell some.  If not, do you want to guess what everyone is getting as gifts this year?