11 August 2015

Some stuff I've been working on lately.

 
 
 
Finally finished the St Michael piece I mentioned months ago.  Actually, I finished it about a month ago, but never got around to taking any pictures until today.


 
 
This one is my own design.  It turned out well for a first try, although I am not happy with parts of it.  My intention was to make it for this year's craft shows, but the thing took me over fifteen hours to make.  It's a mixture of intarsia, carving, and careful wood dyeing, all skilled work.   Even if I were only paying myself minimum wage, that would mean I'd have to charge $150.00 for the thing, and no one is going to pay that.  I could probably shave a few hours off if I tried to produce a series of these, but it still wouldn't likely be profitable.
 
Also, I have been working on a few angels.  I decided to make a few large decorative angels which are scaled up versions of the ones I use for Christmas tree ornaments.



The small ones are the ornaments.  The one on the lower right I cheated on.  It is made from a single piece of pine, which I cut into out, reshaped, coloured, and then put back together.  The one on the upper left is made out of true intarsia, which means that the different colours are achieved by using different species of wood (except for the white drape- Maple wasn't quite light enough so I put a light whitewash over it to get a better colour)  It is made out of Ipe, walnut, maple and beech.  Far more demanding than the white angel. I was pleased with how it turned out.  For the record, the small ones are made of maple, like the large pine one.  The colours are dyes I applied.

2 comments:

Larry Denninger said...

Those are beautiful, Bear. Great work!

Bear said...

Thanks, Larry.