I can’t imagine I’m the only man in the universe who gets dragged around soft-furnishing shops by his wife. If your relationship is similar to ours, then I suspect this will sound familiar: I’m basically there to push the trolley, and reach things down from high shelves. Occasionally she’ll ask my opinion on something, but she’s not really asking my opinion …actually, she intends to buy it, and this is her way of warning me she’s about to buy it.

Thankfully, after eighteen years of non-commital shrugging, she’s learnt not to bother even asking. Anyway … on a recent trip, I managed to split my brain power equally between trolley-navigation, and thinking what else I could do with the CNC. Then we came to an aisle with a whole load of these things:

Ghastly.

Dreadful, aren’t they? If you’re not familiar: they’re wooden letters painted white, and cut to whatever nauseating word you’d like to adorn your mantelpiece. Presumably they’re supposed to reinforce good vibes in the home or let visitors know what makes your family function by signposting it. I imagine words like “LOVE” and “HAPPINESS” sell better than “PASSIVE AGGRESSION” and “EVERYONE SHUT UP I’M WATCHING MASTERCHEF”.

The twisted-freak in me decides at that moment that there is a gap in the market for people who would like such dust-harbourers, but with perhaps a more mature choice of wording. Here are some experiments:

I created them by choosing a nice curly font in Inkscape, fattening the text up a bit, converting the text into outlines, merging the characters into one continuous piece, writing some SVG import code and then putting it through my usual G-code generation process.

I’m quite pleased with the results, and have had many fine complements from friends. I have thoroughly enjoyed showing my bollocks to everyone. My bollocks are displayed proudly in the open-plan office. I also have a cheeky-but-flamboyant Wanker ready to cut, and my enormous Arse is a joy to behold.

It’s been worth it just for the double-entendres, in fact.