Ordering Custom Ornaments in Time for December

Every year we have the same conversation in the second week of December, and every year it ends the same way: the piece someone wants would have been lovely, and there is no longer enough time to cut it, finish it and get it across the country before Christmas.

So here is the honest timeline, working backwards from the date you want it in someone’s hands.

The dates that actually matter

Our ornament cut-off is 30 November. That is not a marketing deadline designed to rush you — it is the last date at which we can run a customized ornament through the workshop and still put it in the post with enough slack for the carriers to have a bad week.

Behind that date sit three windows:

• Two to three days for the proof. Nothing is cut until you have approved a layout. If you send us a name on Monday and reply on Tuesday, that window is short. If you send it and go quiet for a week, everything after it moves by a week.
• Five to seven business days in the workshop. Cutting is the quick part. Sanding, sealing and letting the finish cure is what takes the days, and it is also what makes the difference between an ornament that looks made and one that looks cut.
• Two to five business days in transit, and longer in the two weeks before Christmas. Carriers do not slow down because they are careless; they slow down because December volume is genuinely enormous.

What to send us, and when

If you want ornaments with names on them — a set for a family, a class, a team — the thing that delays orders most is not the design. It is the spelling list.

Send the names exactly as you want them engraved, in a plain list, with the capitalisation you want. We engrave what you approve on the proof, so a name typed in a hurry becomes a name cut into wood. Nicknames, accents, middle initials: put them in as they should appear.

If you want a photograph or a logo turned into an ornament, send it as early as you can. Artwork that needs cleaning up adds a day or two before the proof even goes out, and we would rather tell you in October that a file will not work than in December.

Sets are easier than singles

This surprises people. A set of eight ornaments with eight different names takes barely longer than one ornament, because the setup — the layout, the material, the machine time between runs — is paid for once. If you are ordering for a family or a team, ordering together is both cheaper per piece and faster than four people ordering separately in the same week.

If you have left it late

Call the workshop rather than ordering online. Some designs are quicker than others, and if the calendar allows it we will tell you honestly what can still be done — and what cannot. We would rather say no in early December than take the money and disappoint someone on the 24th.

And if it really is too late this year: an ornament that arrives in January with the right date on it still gets hung up next December. We have made a lot of those.