Photo album

A while back, I posted a few pictures of my carvings, [ a butterfly & a feather ] and people seemed to enjoy them. Due to the response I've had from several people on and offline, I've decided to open a little side business out of my home and sell things at the local shops. It's something I've wanted to do for a while now, but didn't have the confidence. I get people complimenting my work, but, with all the others out there, I didn't know if mine were good enough.

I'll probably go online at some point and do custom carvings, but right now, I don't have anyone asking and I want to see the reaction locally. I contacted a member who had shown an appreciation for my talents and even offered to buy something, but I offered to do something for free. This member didn't ask for anything specific, but in the course of emailing back and forth, we came up with an idea. We spent several days talking about everything but wood working and in one email, she happened to mention she wanted a photo album. Eureka! The perfect opportunity to test my creativeness.

Other than describing the dimensions she wanted, she put the final decision in my hands, trusting me to come up with something unique and even though I had dozens of patterns in my books and thousands more online, none of them felt right. I printed some out, cut them apart, mixing and matching, but I just couldn't find that one that jumped out at me. Till I found that one. I don't know what it was about it, but it just seemed to flow. Anyone who draws, paints or creates, knows how things just speak to you sometimes.
I decided to carve it in a bas relief, because it's more of a challenge and I thought it would look much better than engraving. I never use power tools, because I just don't get a feel for the wood. There's just something about the feel of that sharp tool cutting through the wood and the crunch/scrape sound it makes. Other than that sound, I sit for hours, the whole house completely quiet. It's very soothing....almost hypnotic. I constantly lose track of time when carving.

We've been emailing for a while now and last night/today, I sent pictures of the [ mostly ] finished album to get her approval. She really seemed to enjoy it and even recommended I post them here.
[ She said she wanted to make everyone jealous ]
I won't include her name, but if she wants to step forward, that's up to her.

This is just after I started and was mostly just hogging out wood to get everything down to depth. Not a lot of detail yet, but removing wood from the general area around the design is the easy part. There's a lot of small details that take time to get right and then sanding between lines, in the tight spots, smoothing over, etc can take as much time as carving. It's made from basswood, a carver's favorite and although a light weight wood, very durable, so I hope it holds up for years to come. As you can see, I started with a live edge piece [ which means it still has the bark on it ] and trimmed it down to the dimensions she wants.




Finished view




This will be the back and I think I'm going to add a bit more design in the corners. That looks a little lonely just sitting there in the middle all by itself.



This is basically what it will look like when fully assembled. There are no hinges yet and there's still of bit of sanding and shaving to do and I need to bevel the side piece to fit the way it closes, but pretty much all that's left to do is the small details.
It will be finished in several coats of Tung oil, which will darken it a bit and bring out the shadow in the details.

a reply to: DAVID64

Really beautiful!!!

It's really exciting to see you are able to start a business with your work too. Ha! She (whomever she may be) is right! I'm jealous!!

a reply to: AboveBoard

Good! I'm glad you're jealous, so back off there AB, because IT'S MINE, ALL MINE!! Ha ha! Just kidding...I don't know what I did to deserve the out of the blue, astonishing offer made to me by David. I've never been so stunned by a perfect stranger in all my life, but something told me NOT to ignore his communication. The little voice in my head that's usually pretty quiet, but always right, grabbed a megaphone and yelled, "Listen up woman! Don't let this chance slip away. Grab hold and run with it!" I did, and you can plainly see the talent, ability and beauty this man is capable of and how he shared it. To basically take a plank of wood and coax a thing of precision and beauty out of it with only hand tools is just beyond amazing to me. I do very detailed artwork of my own and can truly appreciate his innate talent, and particularly the love and passion for what he does, how it's accomplished and the feelings evoked during the process of finding the "story" a piece of wood has to tell. Kinda like man and wood become one. David's told the major portion of the story better than I, and it definitely has a great end!

This beautiful album will hold my most precious memories. Family members who are no more, though alive in moments in time that are gone, never to be relived again. These are moments frozen in my sometimes dim memory, witnessed, recorded, protected, that will be passed on in my family for them to add their own story to in this album. And I owe David a HUGE "Thank You" for this. I can truthfully say that, if for one reason or another, I HAD to grab and run for my life...this album would be the first thing I'd grab. Then my cat! 😁

T H A N K Y O U, D A V I D!

Rubi3

a reply to: Rubicon3

a reply to: Rubicon3

It's gorgeous!! No worry, I'll keep my grubby mitts to myself... LOL!

It is truly a work of art, a sacred space for those family photos.

- AB

my name is aleena. am from uae. am working as a photograper. i like photograhy.
now am working as part of an international photography company called abu dhabi photography.
my name is aleena. am from uae. am working as a photograper. i like photogahy.
now am working as part of an international photography company called abu dhabi photography.
event photography abu dhabi