Tree Tray

In this month’s “In The Labs at Christmas” project, Beki shows us how to make a Christmas Tree Tray as a stylish seasonal addition to your home this winter. Carve this project into your very own eye-catching centerpiece showing off the beautifully stripy Kiatt grain, perhaps as a coffee table snack tray for your festive favors or nutty nibbles, or even a wooden sorting board for your family board game pieces. This is a perfect project for users looking for practical adaptable décor for your Etsy shop or ornamental gifts for family and friends. Why not adapt yours into a tree for all seasons and v-carve a personal message then gift it to your special someone to use all year round as a handy key or coin storage.

Beki shows how to design this beautiful tree tray using VCarve to cleverly craft 3D effects using just 2.5D toolpaths. First Beki takes a phone photo of her sketch, imports the bitmap into the software to draw up the tree tray initial design, then using the fantastic new freehand drawing tool she creates the finished vectors by tracing and smoothing around the darker grey areas for the tree branches and base. She uses the offset tools to create the recess vectors and tops off the tree with a star. To machine, Beki chooses Kiatt to bring out the beautiful stripy grain. She uses a vcarve toolpath to draw out the star, a pocket toolpath to clear the recessed areas and creates the smooth dished walls using the molding toolpath, using the vary step-over option to create a much smoother shape. She offsets the tree and star vectors and welds them to use with the profile toolpath to cut the part out.

This FREE project comes with the file(s) for you to download from your V&CO account along with a PDF document that highlights some of the key important steps to help you get through your project. For those of you yet to try our software packages, why not download our FREE trial software here: https://www.vectric.com/free-trial.

We love to see what you make so whatever your seasonal style, try out one of the projects for yourself then share your creative Christmas inspiration on the Vectric Forum or tag us on our socials.

Merry Christmas Making!