You love your pets and think they’re deserving of a spot on your tree too, right? But maybe you’ve already made salt dough paw print ornaments. Or know that those take forever, and don’t want to put the time into them.
Well, this is a quick, easy alternative, and I’ve already done most of the work for you! All you have to do is cut some paper and stain some plywood, and you’re good to go! As an extra bonus, the ornaments turn out super cute despite your very minimal effort! Win!
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3 Step Super Cute Scrap Wood Pet Ornament
Materials
- Twine
- 1/4″ Plywood
- Stain
- Sticker Paper- I used this paper from Amazon. It’s removable, which is nice in that if you place your sticker crookedly (which I am very much known to do,) you can easily fix it!
Step 1: Print and Cut Out Pet Shapes
I have helpfully made a word document that has the paw print, dog bone, and cat face already on it (see above!) All you need to do is download it, open it up, and change the names inside to match your pet!
Once you’ve printed out the document, cut out each of the shapes. I like to use embroidery scissors to do intricate cutting; it just always seems more precise than a large pair!
Note how I cut out the paw print. Ultimately, you’ll cut out each of the pieces separately, but keeping them together for now will help us align the piece later.
Step 2: Prepare the Wood
I used a miter saw to cut my plywood into squares. You could also use a jigsaw or circular saw to do the cutting if you don’t have a miter saw, but beware, if you do that, this suddenly becomes a bit longer of a project.
For the paw prints, the squares had sides of about 3″, while the squares for the bone and cat face were a bit smaller at 2 5/8″ per side.
I then used my drill to cut holes at the top of the plywood.
Then stained the plywood with Minwax’s English Chestnut, which is something I had around the house. I’ve stained this plywood before, and knew exactly how it would turn out, but if that’s not the case for you, you might want to test your stain on a scrap piece of wood to make sure it’s a) the right color, and b) doesn’t need wood conditioner.
Step 3: Assemble the Ornament
For the dog bone and cat face, this is as simple as placing the cut-out sticker onto the wood and threading some twine through the hole.
For the pawprints, I made a light pencil outline of the print on the wood before I finished cutting it out. This gave me a guide when arranging the ovals so that the paw print looked right.
You can’t see the outline I drew at all, but I swear it’s there! Once I’d drawn the outline, I finished cutting out the paw print, and placed each piece on the wood, using the outline I’d drawn as a placement guide.
I made hangers out of twine and a basic knot, and then hung the ornaments on the tree!
Isn’t that easy? And they turned out adorable! I wanted to make one for every family I knew that had a pet… but it turns out I don’t know that many people with pets, so instead I have memorial pet ornaments for all the pets who have crossed the rainbow bridge. Whatever works, right? I hope you enjoy them!
Think you might make these? Save it to Pinterest!
