DIY Pallet Wood Christmas Art (DTC 2018 Xmax Proj. #1)

Attachment 26026

FREE CNC FILES FOR THE DESIGN (SHARED WITH THE PUBLIC IN INVENTABLES PROJECTS)

No one (I know) wants to rush the season and start talking about Christmas before Halloween or 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 first Downeast Thunder Creations Christmas Project for the 2018 Christmas season. It’s a small plaque measuring 8” x 12” (203.2mm x 304.8mm) made with scrap pallet wood.

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. I simply glued up the scrap pallet wood, trimmed it to size, placed the wood in the X-Carve, and “let ‘er rip.” I then glued some smaller pallet wood scraps around the edges to make a border. A little paint and clear spray coat, a picture hanging cleat on the back, and I had a finished product with little time or effort expended.

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 $35.00 to $40.00. 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.

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.

I’ll post more craft show items/projects as I put them together in the near future.

Here's the video:

https://youtu.be/pTSF4QMvP-w