On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me - a layered Christmas scene inspired by Netflix's Hilda!

After spotting a Woodland Scene kit on clearance, I got the idea to turn it into a scene out of the Netflix show Hilda! The kit ended up being a great template for putting together this Hilda project.

Here's how I made it:

Supplies

Supplies I used: (with affiliate links)

Woodland Scene Kit

1/4" pine board

Acrylic paint pens - https://amzn.to/2rct0fO

Tools I used:

K40 laser cutter - https://amzn.to/2sKq0aB

Scroll saw - https://amzn.to/2Vi84lf

Pull saw -

Step 1: Picking the Pieces

I opened up the woodland scene kit and decided on which pieces I wanted to keep. Not wanting the scene to be too crowded, I decided to take out the tree, as well as the animals (that would be replaced by Hilda characters)

Step 2: Painting the Backdrop

I took the paint pens and started painting the backdrop scene. I started with the trees, then added ornaments to the trees (this is a Christmas scene after all). Using blue and white paint and a brush, I painted the mountains.

I used a hairdryer to help speed up the drying process, then put the background piece into the base.

Step 3: Adding the Hills

Using green paint I painted the hills, used the hair dryer to dry the piece, then added it to the base.

Step 4: Changing the Tree

The tree that came with the kit was a generic one, so I used a reference picture from Hilda to redraw the tree in the style of the show.

I took the tree to the scroll saw, then cut out the outline I had drawn.

I used the paint and paint pens to color the tree, and add some ornaments, then added the tree to the base.

Step 5: Designing the Characters

Finding reference pictures for Hilda, The Wood Man, and Twig, I brought each of the pictures into Inkscape.

Using the 'trace bitmap' function I created a vector for each of the characters, and then drew an outline around each.

I scaled each of the characters to what I thought would be a good size for the scene, and then exported them to my laser cutter software.

Step 6: Prepping a Board

I grabbed a piece of 1/4" pine, and started to measure out what I needed. Based on the size of the characters I only needed a 6"x8" piece, so measured and cut accordingly.

Step 7: Etching the Characters

I put the piece of pine into my laser cutter, and loaded the character file into the software (K40 whisper is what I use).

I first raster engraved to get the darker areas, then vector engraved to outline all the features of each of the characters.

Step 8: Cut and Paint

I took my character board to the scroll saw and cut out the outline of each character. I made sure to leave a section at the bottom of each character to fit into the slot at the base

With the characters cut out, I used the paint pens to paint each of the characters. After each character was painted and dried, I added them to the base.

Step 9: Show It Off!

Now that it's done, it was just a matter of finding a good spot to put the scene, and show off this cool looking layered scene with characters from one of my favorite new shows!