Reindeer Ornaments

This project could lend itself for many purposes, the first being an ornament, or maybe a gift tag holder. You could enlarge it to make a nice window decoration or really enlarge it for some thing for your front yard.

For the basic ornament you'll need a piece of 1/4" x 4" x 5-1/2" piece of plywood or your material of choice. I'm making one out of mdf and will paint it black as a window silhouette.

You can download a pdf for this project here.

Owl Family Puzzle

I like unique and different kinds of puzzles to make, and I found this on my favorite magazines website, Scrollsaw Woodworking and crafts. This is another design from Judy Peterson

I recently finished this, its made from 3/4" Poplar and cut with a no.3# reverse tooth blade. The Mother and chicks are stained with Minwax Golden Oak oil base stain and the tree is stained with Varethane's Cabernet Gel stain, then the whole puzzle has several coats of Minwax wipe on poly.

If you're interested in making one of these for yourself or someone you know the pattern is availible as a pdf here, and the complete article is here.

3 - Piece Construction Crew Set

Well, I'm back, had to do a few things before fall gets to serious here in northern Illinois, we've had a couple of days in the upper 70's and one 80 degree day. I took advantage of these last couple of Indian summer like days to clean up the yard, and then I finished up a shaker cupboard that I've been making for the last couple of weeks. I built it for use in the bathroom as a towel cabinet.

I was looking around for another high quality pattern for a handmade toy to post, and came up the plans for this little construction set, as you can see there is a truck/tractor, lowboy and a caterpillar. This looks like a really nice project that you could probably make out of some extra pieces of maple that you already have laying around the shop, and possibly some walnut for the accent pieces for the exhaust stacks and hinge pins, like in the photo. If your ready to get started here's a PDF of the instructions