Save the Date Christmas Ornament

My fiance and I are getting married next December in Tulum, Mexico. Given that we have had a Christmas themed relationship from the start (see this Instructable on the fairy tale storybook proposal I made for her), we thought it would be neat if we made save the date ornaments AND made them using our characters (I was dressed like Super Santa when we met and she was Ms. Gingerbread).

So, last weekend, we made these Christmas ornament Save the Dates. Hopefully our friends keep these on their trees!

Step 1: Create the Characters

that was easy for us.

1) I'm always Super Santa and she is always Ms. Gingerbread. Our dog, Pickles, is always his amazing self

2) Draw them in Illustrator. Fortunately, for the proposal book I built for her, I already had these characters drawn

3) Layer on the accessories.

a) Because we are getting married in Tulum, we gave them bathing suits and Santa got a surf board

b) Of course Santa needs a hat

c) Of course Pickles needs a Rudolph nose

I learned a lesson doing this ornament. For the first time, I used Layers in Illustrator. I created the base layer plus additional layers for the surfboard, pickles, the bathing suits, and the Santa gear.

You'll note that I removed the particulars for our wedding. In our version, we have the date and location etched on the surfboard.

Step 2: Source the Wood

I used Ocooch Hardwoods for most of my lasering wood. They've been reliable for me. For this, I used

Base - 1/8" cherry

Pickles and surfboard - 1/16" aspen

Santa hat, bathing suits, etc. - 1/16" padauk

Step 3: Cut Everything Out

We were making ~50 of these so I create new files that repeated the pieces 50x.

I used a 120W Universal laser at TechShop to cut everything out. It took maybe 4-5 hours.

Step 4: Assemble and Finish!

I also inverted the bathing suits, etc. to create a template that I cut just plop the small pieces into. What I found worked best

1) superglue the Santa bathing suit

2) place the template on the rest of the ornament

3) add super glue to the ornament base then place the pieces on top, using the template to ensure it was placed in the correct position

I was able to knock these out in ~3-4 minutes each so total assembly time of ~3 hours.