A Whale of a Tale

A few months ago, my bestest friend, found a whale tissue box holder on Etsy that she loved. She sent me the link, and her exact comment was:

"LAURA!! Please please please please please please consider making one of these."

Well, as I was looking for a project, the boxes were super cute and her birthday was imminent, I considered it! However, I wanted to put a bit of my own spin on it. So I decided to make a mini whale tissue box using those tiny pocket packages of  tissues, so that he could live on her desk at work and not take up too much room. This is especially fitting since she's a marine biologist!

I made him out of thin plywood using measurements from a small tissue package. I drew up a little tail and attached it to the box. I left the bottom open to allow easy access to replace the packet. I drill a hole in the top and rounded all the edges to ensure no snags. 

Here is is after I'd put on the first coat of paint. It's the only one I have with a clear scale to show how small he is. The little lego lady is taller than him! 

Here is is complete with his smile and eye and a clear coat on top. Luckily he survived the long mail voyage all the way to Edmonton, and is now enjoying his new home!

Spoon Rest

So to get back to turning, I decided to take on a nice simple small project. A spoon rest! I had the idea for it several months ago, just a simple cylinder with a concave surface and a small flat area so it doesn't roll around. I've made several wooden spatulas in the past which you can see here and it's always a pain when you have to lay them on the counter. That being said we wipe down the counters anyways, so I don't mind if there are drips, I just wanted something to prop up the spoon and not take away much counter space. 

Here you can see it in action with on of the spatulas I made. 

You may have seen it before as we use it in almost all of our cooking adventures!

You can see the concave area and flat spots here. 

I polished it up with wax and buffed it so that the food won't stick to it. 

I'm thinking it would be a good set to give as gifts for the upcoming holiday season. 

We'll see though, I have a few other projects up my sleeve that may need to come first. 

Zelda Marquetry

So I've been working on this project since February, but I've been a bit stuck with finishing it, so I'm hoping by talking about what I've done so far, it'll be easier to get the last steps done. Originally I was just going to make a simple lap table to stop my legs from getting burnt when I used my computer on the couch, which I did often not having a desk. I figured it was a good place to practice some of the techniques I learned in the marquetry class several years ago, and get to crack open my box of veneers! Since then I've gotten a desk and don't really need a lap table anymore, and so I think for now it's simply going to become wall art, as I am pretty happy with how the marketry turned out. I wanted something fun, but not to complicated for my rusty skills. One of the first things Jerome and I came up with was the Triforce, but that seemed a bit too simple, so after some image searches online, I decided to attempt the Hyrule crest from Zelda. 

After picking my veneers - walnut and flame birch (I think). I traced out a version of the crest that I had adapted in Illustrator from a picture I found on the web of the Hyrule Shield. It's traced onto freezer paper which is translucent enough to see through. I then centered it and taped the side so I could flip back and forth as I needed it. I had some graphite paper from Lee Valley that I used to transfer the image. It was really nice to work with since it didn't come off on my hands, but it didn't erase easily from the wood once I was done. 

I attempted to make a jig to saw out the pattern, but after several attempts, I gave up on that, and dug out my sharpest exacto knife and carefully hand cut the parts. Which is a legitimate technique, just not the one I was intending to practice - oh well! So this whole principle works by cutting both pieces of wood at once so that the hole and the insert are identical. This is nice as if you wobble a bit on a part, it isn't very obvious, since they'll wobble in perfect unison! I also had to pay attention to the grain and flame direction, so that all the pieces have the same flame direction and don't look wonky. 

Here it is part way done. I went through a lot of Magic tape! But it's important as you want to get the insert in the opening as perfectly as possible. I also ensured that the tape covered all seems so that once I glued it to the backer piece, no glue would seep through and mar the front. 

Here it is all cut out and taped to an inch of it's life. The veneer is really thin - 1mm or thereabouts. So it's pretty delicate when you're trying to move it around. You can see my alignment marks in case my pattern slipped which took a long time to get rid of. The background veneer is a bit wavy which worried me a bit and is oversized at this point to help make gluing it all up easier. 

Here it is glued to the board with the tape gone. This was the first time I got to really see how it looked. I forgot to take a picture of the glue set up. It involved a lot of wood glue, all the clamps I have here, and a giant pile of  everything heavy I could find in my shop on the middle of the board, all with the hope and intent of not getting any air bubbles, waves or ripples in the end. Which thankfully worked! The book-matched walnut worked really well, it adds to the symmetry of the design, and the center seam ended up invisible which was what I was going for! 

Once that was glued for a month or so, I managed to finally sand all the marks of and get it nice and smooth. After some debate about how to finish it a few weekends ago I gave it a few coats of tung oil, then let it sit until last weekend when I gave it two coats of beeswax. This finish combination gives it a nice golden shimmery tone which suits the design well. 

Now for the trickier part. I want to put a frame around it so I can put it on the wall. But I have no table or miter saw... so it's going to be interesting. I had some nice maple which I cut into strips last weekend and hand-planed as straight and true as I could. Then routered a rabbet to set the main part into. But i'm not really sure how I'm going to get nice crisp perfect corners with only a band saw. So feel free to give me any tips, tricks, thoughts, etc and wish me luck this weekend as I try and finally add this project to my completed list!

Saskatchewan Roughrider Android

Our good friends moved away from us last week, and in honour of their move, I attempted to recreate our friend Jesse - an avid Roughrider's fan in Android form. 

Evolution - 25 years of Turning - WBAW entry to the AAW Symposium

This is what the amazing people in my turning club put together this month for the 25th AAW symposium. There are 25 miniatures (1.5"cube max dimensions) representing all different types of turning. The carousel was also turned! It's hard to see the details of all the miniatures, but I got to see them in person at the last meeting and they are ridiculous! All of the lids to the boxes are removable and they are hollowed, there's tiny carving and burning on some. There's even a segmented piece in there with over 100 pieces! 

I've got a lot to learn from these folks! 

Mario and Princess Pillows

A year and two weeks ago some good friends of ours got married. At the time I had a bit of free time on my hands so I wanted to come up with something fun to make them for a gift. They are both Mario fans, to the point where the cake topper at the wedding was Mario and Princess, so I decided to stick with this theme and design a pair of pillows.

I found some small images online and messed around with them until I was happy with the size, layout and breakdown of the colours.

I then took my pattern pieces and traced them onto fusible interfacing.

I had some neat batik fabric that suited the cartoonish style, and I luckily found the remaining colours in a similar pattern at a local fabric store. I then started fusing the interfacing to the back of each piece. 

Here they are all fused together on the background

Next came the painstaking process of  slowly and carefully zigzag stitching all around everything.  

This was by far the most time consuming  and scary part, but it was worth it though, it makes it pop so much more!

They make quite a cute couple, especially with the checkered border.

Here's is Mario complete with piping!

And Peach!

They can look adoringly at each other from opposite ends of the couch. 

Or cuddle up next to each other!

Turning over a new leaf

As I mentioned in my last post, I was letting this blog slip; Well that was 6 months ago! I realized my main issue with the blog was that although I love woodworking, it isn't really what the majority of my projects are focused on at this time. I hope to make it more so as I get better at it, and have more time to focus on it. But over the past few years, I have found myself coming up and making projects as needs arise and they are in all sorts of mediums such as sewing, paper, photography, lego etc. and I'd like to document those as well. So as of now this will be a blog about all the random stuff I make! I have a bunch of cool things that I've been wanting to share somewhere so there'll be some catching up to do for a while, but it should be fun! So I hope you come along for the ride!