Make a Christmas Camper

Last year, for our Christmas project, I made a Red Christmas Truck decoration. It was complete with a pinecone tree, lights, and all the vintage nostalgia you could ask for. I was delighted to see so many other CarveWright users making the project and wondered, “What could we make this year to top it?”. Well, what if we didn’t top it? What if we hitched it, instead. Just like the Christmas truck was last year, the vintage Christmas Camper is the big decorating trend this year, and it’s the perfect addition to the old red truck.

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STEP 1 – Design Project

Making the camper patterns was pretty easy with the import tracing image function from the Vector Drawing Suite. We found an image online, imported it in and traced in the parts.

After modeling the parts, we optimized the project layout, so the entire project will carve on one board. Once finished, we uploaded to go carve.

Step 2 – Carving Project

The board needed for this project is a 4 foot 1×8. We choose select pine, as it carves and finishes well. Then, we loaded and carved the project.

STEP 3 – Prepare Parts

When the project finished, all the pieces were separated from the tabs to be sanded.

Using the sanding mops and Dremel tools, each piece was sanded. TIP: If you will be painting, use a sanding sealer, such as a spray shellac, before sanding.

3M sanding wheels work well for small parts.

STEP 4 – Assembly

After the pieces were sanded, the main cabin, wheel mount insert, and tank sub-assemblies were all glued together

Step 5 – Finishing

In the course of designing this project, some tweaks were needed and 3 of these trailers ended up being carved. This gave us an opportunity to do a variety of finishing styles. We used spray paint to make one red, one white and we masked the third to make a 2 tone look with a spray stain.

Then we used paint pens to add in details like the tail lights, trim, and door handles.

After all the painting was done, everything was coated in a high gloss polyurethane.

The windows seemed like they needed something covering them, so we created curtains to print out and simply tape into place.

With the curtains in place, the final assembly could be done. The wheel mount insert was glued into place.

Then the wheels, hitch, and propane tank.

An 1/8″ dowel can be made as a stand for the camper, or the project comes complete with a trailer hitch you can glue to the Red Truck bumper and combine the projects.