Over in the King Snake Pen topic I mentioned that the blank I made would be trimmed to size for the pen. That left a decent-sized offcut. I have some mini-ornament kits left over from Christmas so I figured I’d put it into one of those.
Here is the offcut piece. Rather than trim the blank even shorter to match the ornament kit tube (which is maybe 1.25" long) I cut a custom tube the size of the workpiece.
Then after turning and polishing, press the hanger cap and finial in, add a hanger, and voila! Coral Snake Ornament! Size is 3.5" tip to tip, and the wood part is about 2.5" of that.
My wife and son both raved over it but personally I prefer a simpler design. Solid wood ornaments can get quite heavy so I like to cut concave contours in them. But with this blank design, all the contours expose so many paths through the laminations that it looks chaotic to me. So despite my wife and son’s positive reviews, I’m lukewarm on this piece.
The ornament above was Made On A Glowforge but the ones below were not. I offer them here for comparison of a simpler lamination style with cleaner lines. The one on the left is my first experience with paduk sawdust bleeding over into the lighter maple - and why I picked the King Snake design. Sandwiching the paduk between very dark wenge seems to have mitigated that problem. They are also comparatively heavy, despite being much shorter, because I had not at that point learned to carve away lots of bulk.
I have some ideas on how to use the GF to make hollow layered ornament blanks but that’s on a back shelf for now.
It’s beautiful, and I can see why your family loves it. Yes, it’s more chaotic, but that also makes it hard to stop looking at it!