How to Make Rae Dunn Inspired Wooden Reindeer Ornaments | Dollar Store Craft

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Welcome to Day 12 of my 12 Days of Christmas Crafting. Perhaps I’ve saved my favourite for last. Here’s how to make Rae Dunn Inspired Wooden Reindeer Ornaments.

I love the Rae Dunn look. It’s clean and simple. Previously, I made some Rae Dunn inspired Easter Eggs. You can read about that here.

I wanted to carry that same style over to making some Christmas ornaments. I’ve made a set of reindeer ornaments using glass balls.

Now I wanted to change it up by making wooden ornaments.

A few days back I used dollar store Jenga blocks to make a wooden snowman ornament. Now I’m going to use the same blocks to make some reindeer ones.

Supplies to Make Rae Dunn Inspired Wooden Reindeer Ornaments

• Jenga blocks or similar
• screw eyes – the size I used was 13/16.
• adhesive vinyl
• Cricut machine to cut the vinyl
• paint – red and white. You can use anything that works on wood: craft paint, chalk paint, milk paint or house paint.
• sandpaper (optional)
• twine

Rae Dunn Font Suggestions

Here is the information I shared with you when I made the Easter Eggs.

The keywords on Rae Dunn pottery are written in a tall and skinny font, with all capital letters.

While there is no actual Rae Dunn font available, there are some that are quite close and will give you the same look.

Now fonts come in 2 basic types – for commercial use and for personal use. You would have to pay for commercial use. It would be for those who are going to use the font on items that they would sell. Personal use is exactly as it sounds – just for your own use. Because of this, it is free.

I strongly believe in supporting fellow artists and try to purchase fonts whenever I can. This way I can use them guilt-free. Otherwise, I would have to keep track of which ones are for commercial use and which ones are for personal use.

Mr. Stretch is part of a duo font by Missey Meyer who is known for some great fonts. The other font is called Mr. Stout. This is a commercial use font.

CZ Skinny is another similar font that is quite close.

The Skinny is perhaps the closest looking font in my opinion. It is available for commercial use (includes upper and lower case) or personal use (upper case only).

How to Add Fonts to Cricut Design Space

• start with Cricut Design Space CLOSED – not open, in other words.
• download the font
• find the downloaded font – typically it’ll go to your “download folder” unless you have your computer set up differently
• open the folder
• find the actual font – it’ll either be an OTF or TTF file
• Open Type Font format (OTF) is intended for Mac OS X and Windows 10 or newer.
• True Type Font format (TTF) is an older format developed in the late 1980s.
• Many fonts will have both formats. Some older fonts may be TTF only.
• Double click the one that suits your computer the best to install
• Once installed, open up Cricut Design Space. It should now be available in the drop-down menu for your font choices.
• To find your font, use the search bar (top right) in the font menu.

How to Adjust the Sizing in Cricut Design Space

Typing your keywords out the first time may or may not fit perfectly. You may need to size them.

You can re-size in Cricut Design Space by clicking the bottom left corner to unlock. From there you can specify both the horizontal and vertical size to make it exactly the way you want it.

Be sure to measure your blocks to find the best size to cut out the reindeer names.

Prepare the Wooden Jenga Blocks

Paint your blocks using red paint. I made one white for Rudolph as a contrast. Allow ample time to dry and cure.

Optional: if you like a distressed look, lightly sand the edges of the blocks, removing a bit of the paint.

For more details on how to get that weathered paint look, please check out my blog post here.

Cut the Vinyl and Apply It

Using any of the font suggestions above, cut out the reindeer names using adhesive vinyl. For in-depth information on adhesive vinyl, check out my post, All About Adhesive Vinyl.

Apply the Eye Hooks and Twine

Gently screw in the eye hooks at the top. As mentioned with the snowman ornament, it is easier to hammer a small hole with a nail in order to get it started.

Once you have the eye hook in, I found it easier to hold the eye hook with some needle-nosed pliers and turn the wood instead.

Cut a small piece of twine, thread it through the eye hook and tie to secure.

Now your wooden reindeer ornaments are ready to hang!

I love how these turned out. At first, i was concerned about the small size, but I really like them.

Want to remember how to make these Rae Dunn-inspired wooden reindeer ornaments? Be sure to save this to your favourite Pinterest board.