If every month was Christmas.

[Anthony Welch]

If I can get these photos to up load, was what brought me yule tide this year.

As always, photo's don't do the actual items justice.

[Dee Gallo]

Those are the nicest ones I've seen, Anthony! What kind of wood did you use, it seems to have engraved very well. The Army one is a great variation of the standard design, excellent!

Happy New Year, dee

[Anthony Welch]

Thank You Dee. Accolades from you mean so much. It is all 1/8" baltic birch. Some experimentation on the cut out of the tribute. The ornaments are hard to keep up with from Dec1 to Dec 24th. I'm always 4 days behind until the 24th. I love doing them, most are repeat customers of 4 - 10 ornaments each. The tribute is new for me and is catching on around here. If I only had a store front...... I've never had a disatisfied customer as of yet.

Happy New Year!

[Frank Corker]

I agree with Dee, you have got the contrasts just right and they look really nice. Happy New Year.

[Anthony Welch]

Two of the most knowledgeable persons on SMC commenting on what I do. It is you that I've learned from. I know this isn't quoted right, but feed a man and his hunger is quinched for a day, teach him how to fish and he is fed for a life time (corney).

thanks

[Steve Clarkson]

Anthony,

I'm not a big fan of photos engraved in wood, but those are very nice. I like the ornament design and I really like the variation you came up with for the LaserBuzz wall tribute.

[Anthony Welch]

Thanks again to everyone about the tribute and ornaments. This afternoon I got a phone call from a lady who's sister I had made some ornaments for, mostly I sell more than one, because grandparents are given one. They range from 4-9 per customer. Anyway she loved them and is gathering her daughters photos of the 7 years of her life and she want me to make 8 of each year and from now on she's making this a tradition. Not too bad for an after christmas sell.

[Joseph Tovar]

Hi Anthony,

Do you mind if I ask you how much you sell each ornament for? I made some simple "name" ornaments and they were a big hit this year. I sold them for $3.00/each or $2.50/ea if they ordered more than 15. Some people thought the price was to low, but I thought the price point was fine for me.

1 - 12"x12" piece of 1/8" baltic birch(~$.90) can get me 9 ornaments and takes about 15 mins to cut them all. I finish them off with a little spray stain. Design time takes about 3 mins to do all 9.

[Anthony Welch]

Joseph, I make the usual christmas designs like santa clause, christmas trees, snowflakes, etc.. and sell for $4/ea or 4 for $12.
Now the photo ornaments I started 3yrs ago at $25/ea, last yr $20/ea and this yr I'm holding steady at $17.50 for one and $10
for replicas of same photo. I've found that I sell more at this lower price. And I've gotten faster in prepping the photo and getting
it ready for the laser. What is difficult, is getting people to think about this sort of stuff early. Most of my orders are the two
weeks before christmas, then I'm swamped until christmas eve. Which is good, but if it continues, i'm gonna teach my wife and
kids the process and have 8hr rotations (ha ha).

anthony

[Bill Cunningham]

What is difficult, is getting people to think about this sort of stuff early. Most of my orders are the two
weeks before christmas, then I'm swamped until christmas eve.
anthony

How true that is!! I bet I turned down 50 jobs this Christmas simply because customers waited until the last minute. I didn't even put a link to my Christmas ornament page this year, because I was swamped with other jobs, and had no time for the ornaments. Mostly memorial items. People love to give emotional gifts at Christmas.

[Joseph Tovar]

Hi Anthony,

Thanks for the info. Looks like I'm not too far off(in pricing) for the ornaments I made. I got the idea from Steve Good. I saw his tutorial on, I think Youtube, and made a few for gifts at work. Once a few people saw them they wanted a bunch. Same deal as above...everyone wanted them a week or 2 before Christmas. Lucky I had some time off from work so I was able to fulfill the orders. Attached are the ones I made.

[Mike Null]

Joseph

Nice work on the photo.

[Jim Beachler]

Anthony, do you include the mailing in your pricing or is that extra?
I do the personalized ornaments like Joseph does and charge $10 each which includes mailing.

Just curious to see how my price stacks up.

[Joseph Tovar]

Wow Jim...That's a great price to get. Are they 1/8" thick too, or thicker? What type of wood are you using? How many are your customers ordering at that price? I thought the most I could get is $5.00/ea, but since my customers wanted larger quantities of 35, 45, and 43, I gave it to them at $2.50/ea.

[Anthony Welch]

Joseph- I'm talking about the photo ornaments @$17.50, simple vector cut ornaments are $4/ea.
Jim- All my sales so far are WOM and either I deliver them when I'm in town or they come by and
pick them up.

Anthony

[Jim Beachler]

Joseph - I make mine from 1/8 baltic birch as well. What I do is to first paint the boards with one of 4 colors (red, green, gold, silver) and apply lacquer with glitter mixed in. Then I cut the ornament. For my price, I also include free mailing of the ornaments. Most people buy 2 or 3 and a few bought as many as 10. I probably did about 200 ornaments this year.

Ornaments is not my primary business. Making Puzzle Stools is. These are a great add on sale to my customers orders.
I may not do as many as you but I make more profit on each one.