DIY Wooden Race Medals {The Grand Slam Peaks Medals}

DIY Wooden Race Medals {The Grand Slam Peaks Medals}

We love races and running at our house. I love races so much that I have a whole wall in my bedroom dedicated to running to display my medals and bibs. We have even been able to convince our kids to run and I built them all medal holders to display all of their race bling. My family isn’t the only ones in my family that like to do races and/or challenging hikes. A couple months ago two of my sisters decided to hike and run the Grand Slam Peaks in Boise, Idaho.  They did the 4 peaks in 4 days, which is quite the accomplishment. Since it was pretty big deal, my brother in law contacted me and asked if I could make some wooden medals to celebrate their achievement. Since I have my awesome laser cutter, the xTool M1, it was an easy task. He sent me a little sketch of what he wanted and I created the Grand Slam Peaks medals for them. I love how they turned out and the best part was it a surprised for my sisters, they had no clue and they were thrilled to get them.

If you are new to xTool or laser cutters, check out my beginners guide to xTool.

This is how I made the wooden Grand Slam Peaks Medals.

Going off of my brother in law’s sketch, I designed the wooden medal. I had it be two layers. I engraved and cut the wood at the same time. To see how to do that, check out this post. The design turned out really good, I love that he suggested having the name of the peaks go up the mountains.

Once the design was all set and sized, I sent the design to the xTool M1. I made the wooden medals pretty big, about 5×5 inches. I cut them out of 3mm basswood plywood and used my air assist attachment to help with the cuts.

Here are the Grand Slam Peaks medals all cut out and ready to be glued together. I used E6000 and glued the two layers together. I used a little painters tape to make sure the top layer laid down flat.

While the glue dried on the wooden medals, I worked on the ribbon for the medal. I wanted to have it say something and not be plain, so I add some heat transfer vinyl onto it. It was really easy to do and it looked amazing! I used a 1 1/2 inch ribbon. I used the same design of the medals, just did it a little differently. I had all of the different Grand Slam Peaks on it and then the mountain range also. You can used the M1 to cut the heat transfer vinyl or you can use a Silhouette/Cricut. You can cut it anyway, just make sure you mirror the image before cutting it. It has to be done that way for any of the machines.

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Once I had the heat transfer vinyl all cut and weeded, I situated it onto the ribbon and then used my heat press to put the vinyl onto the ribbon.  You could also use an iron to do this.

Here is the ribbon with the heat transfer vinyl, I love how the white HTV looks on the black ribbon.

I then threaded the ribbon through the slit in the wood. I ironed a crease into the ribbon to make it lay a little better when attached to the wooden medal.

I then sewed the ribbon together. Just a real quick tip, ribbon frays when you cut it. So you can burn the edges with a lighter to prevent fraying even more.

And that’s it!! I love how the Grand Slam Peaks Medals turned out!

Here is a close up of the engravings on the wood. The names of the peaks look awesome going up the mountain peaks.

Here are my two sisters showing off their super cool medals!

After making those wooden medals for my sisters, I have been itching to make more. I love how they turned out and they were so much fun to make! A friend of my mine was putting on a fun run, so I volunteered to make some awesome wooden race medals for it. I ended up making 47 of them, it was a great turnout!

I made these wooden medals the same way I made the Grand Slam Peaks medals but I made them a little smaller, they are about 3×3 inches.  The best part about that size is that I could use up all of my scrap wood! When I made the layered signs, like these ones in this post, I have a lot of extra wood left over from inside the frame. So making these wooden race medals were perfect because I had lot of scrap wood to use.  I actually didn’t use a single full piece of the 3mm plywood, all 47 medals came from my scrap wood.  I have made a lot of wooden projects using my xTool, can you tell? :).  I always save any wood that is more than 2-3 inches.

Here is a close up of the design. I just used the same design that my friend used for the shirts of the race.

And here are all of the wooden race medals! For these one, I used a 1.5 inch satin ribbon in a neon green and neon pink. The colors were so pretty! This time around, I didn’t add words to the ribbons, but I easily could have. It just would have taken a little more time.

Here are the wooden race medals after the 10k race! Two of my boys and me rocking the cool medal :).

My son’s cross country team also ran the 10k, so here they all are sporting their race bling :).

Another thing I have decided to do with my race medals (besides make some) is to engrave on the back of them. I have so many medals and races, that I forget what time I have gotten on them. I just did a half marathon last weekend. The medals were really cool but they didn’t have a date on them, so I decided to engrave the date and our times on the back.

Here is the back of the medals engraved. I used different fonts for mine and my husbands, both look awesome though. You can add whatever you want on the back of them, like the location of the race, your place, if you PRed, etc. I went with simple and just did the date and time but the opportunities are endless.  I just put the medals into my xTool M1, typed in the text, selected “metal dog tag” as the settings, clicked engrave and the machine did the rest! It took about 6 minutes to do for each one. I can’t wait to do it to all of my race medals!  You can see how to engrave metal on the xTool in this post.

Make sure to check out all of my other running and fitness posts here.

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