Marquetry Belt Buckles

Just over a year ago, I started making marquetry belt buckles. This past week I finished my 7th, so thought it might be time to blog about them! They are nice small projects (2" x 3") that are good for trying techniques on a small scale and have the benefit of being a cool useful item when they're done. I wear one of them almost every day, and enjoy choosing the one that fits my mood for the day.

This is my most recent one. A 1-up mushroom from Mario. I used this to try sand shading for the first time. The darkened areas of the mushroom that give it a more round look are achieved by holding the individual pieces in a pan of hot sand and basically toasting them! I also tested out a shellac finish on this one. The green material is a dyed veneer, and you have to be more careful with the finish so that it doesn't run. This was a good test, as I am working on a bigger project with similar veneer and wanted to have the process figure out before applying it to the big project. 

This was my very first belt buckle. I was hesitant to spend a lot of time cutting out a pattern, not know how it would work and how it would hold up to everyday wear. It worked better than I expected, hence making so many more. I used regular polyurethane for the finish on this one. 

This was a design I doodled one day, I thought the idea of a heart shaped gear was kind of neat. I cut it carefully and got two for one. By stacking the two colours on top of each other, the cut out of one, inserts in the other, and you get two very different looking buckles with the same design. I tried using Waterlox as a finish on these for the first time. I really liked how easy it was to apply and how durable it was as a finish. 

For these two, I used the same process to get two versions of the same design. I wanted to recreate an Escher tesselation, highlighting the main piece. So I decided to practice woodburning on veneer to outline all the surrounding flying fish. It was interesting to see how the veneer handled the wood burning and practicing how much heat and pressure to apply to get the right result. 

And then of course you may already know I'm a big Lego fan, so I decided to make a Lego Minifigure buckle. The main challenge to this one was to cut the tiny hands without them falling apart or cracking. I also got to see how to create the separation between the arms and the body by just making a cut in the wood. 

To turn these little pieces into belt buckles I buy these buckles from Amazon, and just screw them onto the back. The nice thing about this is, if I decide later I am tired of one design, I can just remove the hardware and attach it to a new buckle design!

Re-Purposing a Found Outdoor Table

Last month I made a short but very fun trip back home to Ottawa. We spent quite a bit of time doing projects of various sizes and shapes. This was one of the simpler ones. Earlier in the summer my Mum and Cousin came across this table on someone's lawn. It had seen better days, but my Mum had a vision!

To get it home in the car, she had to sit in the trunk holding it in, as the back of the car couldn't close. Luckily it was only a block or so away from our house! Looks like they had a pretty amusing time getting it home. 

The first problem with the table was that it was too big for the deck area and use that she envisioned. So I started by cutting a few of the boards off the top. I just used a hand saw, but it was pretty quick work. The table was made of really nice cedar which has a lot of good life left in it. 

I cut the matching boards off the other side. We did this one board at a time so we could see the size as we went to judge when it was just right. 

The next problem to address was that it was too tall. So using a square and the hand saw again, I cut each of the four legs to a better height. 

Mum seemed pretty happy with the result so far! The round edges give it some character, with it being more manageable now that it's narrower. 

Finally I trimmed the braces at an angle so they taper down from the table top to look more intentional. And we set it in place. Looked pretty good. In the spring it will get sanded and painted and be a great addition to the deck! 

Alkaline Trio Laptop Vinyl

At work we do a fair amount of work with vinyl decals. We almost always cut and apply decals to our prototypes instead of silkscreening them. If you've ever seen how vinyl works, you know that there is a lot of waste. Well I always thought it was pretty cool, and asked if I could have any of the scraps that would otherwise be thrown away.

I've done a few small stickers for my sketchbook - like a canadian flag and a lego man, just by hand cutting them out with an exacto knife. I'd been wanting to make something cool for Jerome's new work laptop for a while. There are a ton of awesome  vinyl decals that play on the lit mac logo, and I was looking to do something similar, but different than what I had seen. A few weeks ago he went to an Alkaline Trio concert, and had gotten a sticker to put on his laptop. It turned out to be way to big though, so I came up with an alternative that would give a cool glowing effect. The center skull is on the light and so it glows when the computer is on. And the black vinyl blocks out the rest of the light.