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Day 5 of the 24 Days of Christmas Crafting!

The goal for these 24 days is to give you ideas for hand-crafted Christmas decorations for your tree and home. Come back each day to try the next craft. 24 Days of Christmas Crafting!

Before I jump in to tell you how to make these “JOY” plaques from wood veneer, I want you to know that you do not have to use wood veneer. You can make these from many types of materials. You could use cardstock, glitter paper, leather, bonded fabric, and so on. Use your imagination and whatever supplies you have on hand!

I live near Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Ann Arbor has this neat store called The Scrapbox. It’s the kind of place where companies unload their scraps then all the DIYers and crafters spend hours of joy pondering all the cool things they can make from the scraps. You know, “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.” The last time I was at The Scrapbox, I found wood veneer samples. Since I knew the Cricut Maker could cut veneer-thicknesses of wood, I bought several of them. They are not full sheets and they have labels on them so my initial designs with wood will be small.

As I was thinking about ideas for this 24 Days of Christmas Crafting series, I remembered the wood veneer and got the idea to cut two different woods with the same design and fit them into each other, to make them “negatives” of each other. I love how they turned out and I’m excited to show you how you can do the same thing.

Again, you don’t have to do this from wood veneer. If you do not have a craft machine that can cut wood veneer, you could use decorative papers, glitter paper, card stock, craft foam, and so on. You could even cut these by hand with an X-Acto knife from some of these other materials.

Materials and Supplies

To make the “JOY” veneer plaques you will need the following:

• 2 different wood veneers (light wood and dark wood) — If you have a single large sheet, you can cut it in half and paint or stain one half. I searched Amazon for “wood veneer” and found several available.
• Pattern from my Resource Library
• Glue
• 1 sheet of card stock
• Something to frame the final product into

About the Pattern

As I said earlier, I specifically did this project so I could cut the wood veneer on my Cricut Maker. This design will work for any stiff material that you cut in a craft machine. You can also cut it by hand using something like an X-Acto Knife but you will have to make sure your cuts are as perfect as you can make them. The cutout of one material has to fit perfectly into the other contrasting color material.

Cutting the Veneer

Note: If cutting by hand, print the design in the PDF file in my Resource Library.

For those with craft machines, using the design in my Resource Library, upload the .SVG file to your craft machine design application.

Neither of the two wood veneers I chose for this project are specifically called out in the list of materials for the Cricuit design software. I chose the basswood setting and used the knife blade. That worked quite well. Because I wasn’t entirely sure how well this setting would work, I used one of my old mats, just in case the basswood setting overcut into the mat but the setting was fine. I only had two places where I needed to complete a cut after the project was off the mat. An X-Acto knife worked well to do those two touch-up cuts.

I taped the veneer to the mat for a confident hold.

Assembly

When the cutting is complete, carefully pop out the cut designs.

Assemble the pieces by placing the light colored cutouts into the dark colored design then the dark colored cutouts into the light colored design.

To keep the veneer flat, I glued the assembled pieces to a piece of card stock and laid something heavy on it until the glue set.

Place the veneer into the frames and you’re all set!

I set them on the mantle with some greenery and a bow but I sort of like how they look hanging on the wall at an angle, too.

Happy Decorating!

Remember to come back each day for a new project in the 24 Days of Christmas Crafting!

You can get the pattern to this and all my DIY and craft projects in my Resource Library by subscribing to my mailing list.

Remember to pin this to your favorite holiday crafting board on Pinterest!