A lady (Sally Butler) at the last carving club meeting provided a rectabular piece of wood, some brief instructions, and a carved example of a wooden egg with a flower on it, for us to duplicate. At first glance, it seemed simple and easy enough project, but as I carved and carved and carved, making an impressive pile of chips, I discovered that making a nice wooden egg without a lathe requires a lot of work! I can be stubborn and I was determined to get an egg shape no matter how long it took! I was so proud when I finally got some thing that didn't look like a football. I spent quite a few hours over the past month working on that simple shape with just knives. When I had it really close, I used a small sanding drum on my flex tool to smooth it out. The instructions and example left more knife marks showing, but I like my eggs smooth! The dogwood blossom took a lot less time, but I took the instructions to heart and took extra time to try and achieve more realism in the carving. I used a pyrographic pen to shade and add details to the flowers and leaves. I paint a lot of my carvings, which hides some of the cool effects that you can get with burning, so I decided to leave this unpainted and just finish it with a boiled linseed oil mixture. Thank's for looking.
I don't think I would have bothered to carve the egg itself (my lathe would complain about that :-), but I REALLY like the results.
ReplyDeleteNice job!