Decked out for the holidays
Published 9:00 am Friday, November 23, 2012
Sandy Forstner, Executive Director Austin Area Chamber of Commerce takes a metal snowman out to Main Street Wednesday afternoon to place along the street. The decorations were made by the Austin High School shop class.
This year, bringing the holiday cheer is a group effort.
The Vision 2020 Downtown Austin group and students from an Austin High School metalworking class teamed up to make new decorations for downtown Austin. The new additions were set up downtown late Wednesday afternoon.
The Downtown Austin group, which is working to implement one of the community betterment program Vision 2020’s Top 10 Ideas, asked students at the high school to consider making plywood decorations and offered to pay for the materials. Career and Tech Education Ryan Stanley said plywood wouldn’t last long.
“We decided to go with metal instead, so they would last longer,” Stanley said.
The students worked together to import clip art pictures into the computer, convert them, clean them up and load them into PlasmaCAM metal-cutting software. From there, student Elijah Crews led the effort to use the machine and cut the metal, Stanley said.
Tom Dunlop secures Christmas decorations in a planter along Main Street Wednesday afternoon. The decorations were created by the Austin High School shop class.
