Being close to Christmas and my niece turning one, I have been thinking about toys. Even though I have no time making things right now, I love home made toys! Especially wooden toys and plush things for the littlest.

Many toys can be built at home (if you have any kind of workshop availiable). Since I also love typography I thought you can make your own stackable wooden letter blocks. Now that you can laser etch fairly simply in many print workshops, this would be a nice and simple toy to make. You can design your own images and even make an image that span multiple cubes, like a puzzle. And etching it in wood would make it instant relief.

(Google SketchUp is great to visualize these kind of ideas!)

laser etched wooden blocks

BTW, paper cut silhouettes make great laser etchings!

UPDATE: Lark & Lola has made a wooden block calendar by gluing decorative paper to the blocks and stamping letters and numbers onto them. Looks nice! Not too good for small children with the glued paper and stamp ink, but if they are for grown-ups this’d make a great gift! If you don’t have stamps you could print on the paper (with a printer that works on glossy paper).

UPDATE 2: I found these gorgeous Alexander Girard Alphabet Blocks via SwissMiss. Almost exactly what I was thinking about!