Birthday Buck

My friend Kelly and I still give each other gifts for our birthdays. Now that I think about it, she’s really one of the last friends that regularly exchanges gifts with me. I think it’s fun. I always get the best gifts from Kelly. She always makes them super creative and thoughtful. The gift she gave me this year was really awesome. She knows my love for coffee and that I have started collecting globes, so she gave me this really great basket of coffee from around the world as well as a globe!

So, I try to be creative in return when it comes to her birthdays. One year, my mom, Jessie, and I made an apron for Kelly’s birthday.

This year I wanted to buy her one of these. I’ve seen them all over pinterest and I think they are really cool. They are cardboard animal trophies. Cool, right? For around thirty bucks (ha bucks) you can get a cardboard trophy online. I was just about to purchase it, when I thought.. wait, I could make this! And out of something a little more durable than cardboard.

So I searched pinterest for a template for a buck trophy. I came across this one.

It was too small for what I envisioned so I took this template and blew it up about 200%.

After cutting out the templates, I traced them onto a sheet of luan underlayment that I got at Menards.

After tracing, Dad helped me cut out the shapes with a jigsaw so I could then cut more precisely on a scroll saw. This was my first attempt at using a scroll saw. I watched him do it first then I took a swing at it. It definitely takes some getting used to. It is really fun but I really need more practice.

Once I got all the pieces cut out, I assembled them. This was the fun part! It was like putting together a puzzle. I had to go back a few times and make some wider cuts to make sure everything fit. Once that was done, we secured it all together with some hot wood glue.

Then of course, I spray painted it green. #1 because I can’t leave anything unpainted and #2 green is Kelly’s favorite color.

It’s fun to look at it from all different angles. If you look at it straight on, it doesn’t really look like a buck but once you move around, it comes to life!

I can’t think of too many people that I could give a green buck trophy to as a gift and they would love it as much as me. Kelly is one of those friends.