DIY Christmas Activity Tokens for a Holiday Bucket List

Make your own Christmas Activity Tokens with your laser machine! Use an xTool S1, P2, or M1 to engrave and cut 25 tokens that will help you plan your Christmas activities! Perfect to use as a Christmas Bucket List, Advent Calendar, and as a special gift for your Elf! Download the activity tokens for FREE!

DIY Christmas Activity Tokens

Every holiday season, we plan fun Christmas activities with the kids. I have used this printable Christmas Bucket List for a couple of years now, but we wanted to add some new activities to our list! There are some easy activities like “Make a Christmas Craft,” and others that would be great for the weekend like, “Visit a Christmas Tree Farm.”

Instead of making a new printable, I decided to make these Christmas Activity Tokens for the kids with my xTool S1 Diode Laser. The tokens are the perfect gift to welcome back their Christmas elf, and then they can pick activities to do as a family all season long.

Keep them in a mason jar, small token bag, or other container to choose your tokens from. You could even add small magnets to them and hang them on the refrigerator.

I made them with my new xTool 40W S1 laser, and you can download the file for FREE and make your own tokens!

You can use any laser craft machine for this project, and if you don’t have one, now is a great time to check out all of your options and decide what laser is right for you!

Supplies You Need to Make Christmas Activity Tokens

Here’s what I used to make the activity tokens for Christmas:

• xTool S1 40W Diode Laser (although any diode or CO2 laser that cuts 3mm wood will work)
• 3mm MDF (~1/8 inch) Draftboard

You can use any kind of MDF or wood that you would like for this project. Draftboard is great to use because it is inexpensive, but basswood, birch, or even walnut plywood or hardwood would work for these tokens. The only downside to draftboard is that the details aren’t as crisp, but this can be the case for other plywoods as well. Just test your materials to get the results you would like!

How to Set Up Activity Tokens in xTool Creative Space

The Christmas activity tokens will download as an SVG file. You can import it directly to xTool Creative Space or another program compatible with your laser machine. I will detail the whole setup below for the new S1 machine. It has some unique features that will not apply to other laser machines. If you do have another laser, you can skip this section (or continue reading to see how file setup works with the xTool S1 and Creative Space.

Turn on your laser machine and open xTool Creative space (XCS). Connect your machine if you haven’t already done so. I currently connect my machine via WiFi, and I love that once I set the material up I can finish the file work at my desk which is across the room from my xTool S1.

The first step is to place your material in the machine and prep the machine for file placement. The S1 has an automatic material distance/thickness tool on the right side of the program screen. Manually move your laser head to the area that you would like to measure, then click the auto measuring button.

Once that measurement is set, you will use XCS and the xTool’s new unique twin-point positioning technology to set the coordinates of your working area. I was skeptical of using a machine without a camera positioning system, but I really love the coordinate positioning!

Click the “Set Marking” button (on the right side under the distance) to start set up of your working area.

Move to your machine and manually move the laser head to position the red “crosshairs” at the top left corner of your working area. Press the button on the front of your S1. Then move the laser head to the bottom right corner of your working area. Press the button again.

Confirm the coordinates on your XCS screen and you will notice that an outlined box appears on your screen. That’s the available working area of your material!

This tool is really great for positioning your design perfectly on your material or laser blank, and is especially helpful for materials like jewelry blanks, keychains, and other small items. If you center your design within the working area on your screen, it will be centered on the material.

Now you need to place the activity tokens. In the left tool bar, click the top icon that says “Image.” It will open a navigation box, which you can use to locate the downloaded Christmas Activity Token file. Open it in XCS, and wait a moment for the file to load on the screen.

Each token is a separate design. You can delete the tokens you don’t want, or use the blank designs to make your own! The blank tokens (the bottom row) can be removed before cutting if you don’t want to make your own designs.

Some more Christmas themed activities that you might like to add to the Christmas tokens are: Christmas Movies marathon, Go Sled Riding, Eat Candy Canes, and Wrap Christmas Gifts!

There are two parts to the design: Engrave and Cut. You will need to set the design elements to the proper function.

Select the text of each activity token while holding down the “Shift” key – this will be the part of the design that is engraved. When all are selected, in the top tool bar click the “Group” button. This will keep all of the text areas together.

Then, in the Layers panel on the bottom left, click “move to” and choose a new color/layer for the engraved part of the design. This step will make it easier to select/deselect your laser machine settings.

Now in the layers panel you have two colors/layers. Select the original layer, which is now just the shape outlines that will be cut by the xTool. Go up to the top toolbar and click “Combine > Unite” to put the cut lines together as one shape.

Now it’s time to choose the settings for the activity tokens.

NOTE: TO GET A BETTER ENGRAVE
Depending on the material that you use, I have found that adding a “SCORE” line to the outside of your engraved area will produce a much cleaner and precise-looking engrave. If you find that your engrave looks a little “fuzzy,” try this tip!
In XCS, select the part of the design that you will engrave. Select “Outline” and set the Offset to ZERO. Then move this selection to a new color/layer in the layers panel.

Laser Settings for Christmas Activity Tokens

For each of the layers you will select the layer, then choose the settings on the right side of the screen. Then repeat for each of the remaining layers.

*Keep in mind that settings will vary depending on the machine and type of material that you use to make the activity tokens. Here are the settings for my 40W S1 Diode laser for 3mm MDF Draftboard.

• SCORE: 40% power/150 speed/1 pass
• ENGRAVE: 32% power/300 speed/1 pass/100 lines
• CUT: 100% power/11 speed/1 pass

At this point, I confirm the order of the engrave/cut in the Layers Panel (it is the small floating panel, usually on the bottom left hand corner of the screen.) The colors in the layers panel coordinate to the colors of the design. You can change the colors as well as change the order of the layers. You can even Right Click on each layer and rename it to make it easier!

I make sure the Cut layer the bottom layer so that the xTool will cut the design last. If you’re using score and engrave, the order of those two layers does not matter.

If the machine performs the cut function first, sometimes the cut pieces will move and your engrave or score functions will be misaligned. So I make a mental note to always double check that the cut layer is the bottom layer of my design.

List of Christmas Activity Tokens

Here are all of the Christmas activities that are included in the SVG file. Each token is shaped like a tiny snow globe. There are 25 tokens for the holiday season in total, one for every day of December until Christmas! You can pick and choose which ones you would like to use for your holiday bucket list, or use all 25!

• Watch a Christmas Movie
• Write a Letter to Santa
• Visit a Christmas Tree Farm
• Make Hot Cocoa
• Make Your Own Ornaments
• Bake Christmas Cookies
• Go Ice Skating
• Wear Ugly Christmas Sweaters
• Build a Snowman
• Build a Gingerbread House
• Decorate a Christmas Tree
• Make & Send Christmas Cards
• Spread Christmas Cheer
• See Christmas Lights
• Read a Christmas Book
• Make Snowflakes
• Make Reindeer Food
• Donate a Toy
• Listen to Christmas Music
• Make a Christmas Craft
• Take a Family Photo
• Wear Christmas Pajamas
• Family Game Night
• Do a Christmas Puzzle
• Hang Christmas Stockings

Be creative! If you live in a place that doesn’t get snow, Build a Snowman might be that you make a small snowman out of cotton balls and homemade accessories. Take a Family Photo might be as simple as taking a selfie! Don’t take it too seriously and have fun!

Download Christmas Activity Tokens SVG for Laser

Make a set of Activity Tokens for Christmas with my FREE Design!

This file is DOWNLOAD #287 in my FREE DOWNLOADS LIBRARY.
Get the password below! (If you have the password, head over to the library to download the file.

You will NOT be sent an email with the file. Free SVG files available for download are for PERSONAL USE ONLY. SVG file is included to use with xTool Creative Space and other laser design software.

Don’t forget to pin this design to your favorite Pinterest board! Pin the image below or another image from the post.