Somewhere between half and two thirds of my family aren’t technically blood kin, rather, it’s this amazingly loving group of queer folk, many of whom have lost most or all of our own families and found each other.
So, this year, since I have both the staggering privilege and access to a Glowforge to do so, I set out to make sure that none of my ‘found family’ went without something to tear shiny wrapping paper off of this holiday season.
It wasn’t till I started writing out a list of names that I realized how big our family’s grown the past few years. So, on the criteria of a) quick to make lots of, and b) relatively easy to ship, I started playing with double wrap cuffs.
I landed on a design in a few variations that lets me get about 7 to a sheet of 
(and leaves an end remnant that’ll turn nicely into single wrap cuffs.) Then I set about figuring out how to customize a really handy blank canvass.
Amazing what you can do with a little tooling 
Or playing with dye…
About five or six of these in I had this moment of “this is too cool not to share” because it was really approachable, outside of the ones I hand tooled, the hardest part was setting the snap. And, at least for my extended family, the nice thing was that depending which way it got customized, it works for people that are enby or trans-masculine about as well as it works for the more femme members of our family.
Lesson learned on the six strand one though… the ‘charred leather’ smell isn’t really notable on the single or double strand version but the six strand one was just not happening. A few minutes with a size 2 edge beveler and all is well.
I did run into a few people that would never wear jewelry of any sort though, so…
who doesn’t love a cuddly octopus!
