I always enjoy our Christmas Tree Festival and Auction here in town. Community members and businesses adopt Charlie Brown style live table top trees or wreaths and decorate them for auction. You’ve likely seen some of my submissions in the past. Rather than a tree of my felt owls or critters, I tried something different this year. I call it “A Milbridge Christmas.”

I selected ten iconic buildings along Main Street and created them in silhouette.

With Paul’s help, we imported my silhouette images into his Easel software that communicates with his CNC machine and he cut them out of thin plywood for me. After a whole lot of sanding and painting I tied them onto the tree with red cords.

For a tree surround I had him cut out three larger versions for me. I made little hinges from wire that I hot glued to the backs to connect them. After covering the windows with tissue paper, I tucked battery operated tea lights behind them.

The houses didn’t turn out as sharp as I’d hoped. I used luan – a really inexpensive thin plywood that easily splintered and is was difficult to create a smooth paint job on. However, looking at the tree as a whole now, I’m pretty happy with the end result.

Now to tackle the aftermath debris on my dining room table!

Here are a few of my other submissions this year.