These are escort card holders but our photographer photographed our rings on them

Table with table card number holder

Us and our cake plate

escort card holder

And of course, we married

All professional photos are property of Sarah Hodzic Of Blink Photography

Um so wow a lot has happen since i worked on this thread. i will try to describe what i have done but i’m not sure if i have photos (I will try to check if people ask)

So after we cut up the roots / branches for the tree stump we ended up used a inflatable cylinder sander that attached to the drill press thingy attached to my lathe. So instead of a chuck spinning around i have a nice cylinder full of 80 grit sandpaper spinning around. It was awesome for shaping the roots and branches.

We did dove tails for the branches / roots. In some areas we removed way too much wood for the dove tails to fit snugly. So we did a 50/50 ratio of cherry wood dust and tightbond II and used it to the fill the gaps. It really worked awesome.

below is a photo of the joints glued up. the glue-up was messy but my dremel too totally took care of that

Ohhh messy glue job.

Anyways

So everything was looking great but we really needed to stain in. the idea was to stain the whole trunk darker and to have a dark ring around the cake plate surface to imitate a cross section sitting on top of the stump.

Thanks to all the jocks who helped determine a finish and lead my to the wood whisperer video about how to prevent blotching. i think we still did get some blotching because we let the stain sit to long and there are marks left from the dremel. but i think it looks badass (can I say that here? I’ll find out if the filter filters me)

ok so how did we get the awesome ring around the cross section piece.

first i taped white paper over the “circle” (it’s not perfectly round). at the approx. middle there’s a little hole dapped in the middle so i took a piece of string, tied it to a push pin and the other side to the pencil. i used the push pin to anchor as my center and was able to trace a semi symmetrical circle on the paper. then we cut around that line. then we applied painter’s tape to the edge, and then removed all but 1/4 sticking out of the edge of the white paper (so only 1/4 of tape was holding the paper to the surface of the wood. we then taped the top of the paper in case when we wiped we were a little careless and wiped onto the paper. Mike made a funny face out of it.

so then we applied it to the wood and then applied the finish

we were ecstatic to see a clean line!

Ok so table number card holders – these are piece of cherry wood from my parents fruit tree that died earlier this year. it was cut on a chop saw. Then with the bandsaw i cut 1.5” into the center. then the top was made pointed by cutting the tops pointed with the bandsaw (does that make sense). it as smooth out on the sander. Voila, table markers. This was the fiance’s idea – awesome way to dot eh table numbers

I want to take a moment for the awesome jocks who took the time to answer my staining questions and a big shout out to shipright and his amazing jewelry chest that really inspired me to make the tree cake plate.

if people can maybe land me some suggestions on making the stain a little more even that’s great. otherwise it might look nice a tiny bit blotchy… more “organic” looking

49 Ornaments here

Close-up of some ornaments featured in the above photo

31 ornaments featured in this photo

80 intarsia ornaments, 20 more intarsia ornaments to go

Here’s an image of the wood, pre-grouted. if you look at my last blog entry, you can see how I was able to chisle away the wood for the brick pattern.

In this photo you can see the tightbond 3 glue (which dries darker than regular tightbond), a collection of maple dust, a cup, tooth picks, and kabob sticks.

Glue is mixed into this cup with some maple dust until the mix is a thick paste – not overly wet, but not too dry. This mix is then applied into the groves of the “brick” wall.

Here’s a closer look

After it is fitted into the groves, it is removed by hand (my fingernails hate me right now)

And here’s an up-close photo of the brick wall drying

this piece is then sanded on an orbital sander. It was then glued up as a box. I don’t have a photo of it glued and out of clamps, but here’s a photo of the box clamped.

I am hoping to have this project done very soon.

Look forward to comments!

I think the next thing to do is glue up the box and then shape the legs. I am a bit afraid that applying a finish will darken the grout, hopefully it won’t be too much.

Whatdaya think?

So i bought a Pneumatic Sanding Drum set and i used my lathe to wear down the rough edges (pictured above). While this looks great I started to feel that the tree was looking too manufactured. It needs to look a bit more natural / organic. So last night I went to the shop and recut the sides on the bandsaw. I’ll post photos of me working with the Pneumatic Sanding Drum set and the re-sanded roots tomorrow.

First I draw my brick marks in pencil. Each brick is about 5/8” long, 1/4” high. I draw out my pattern using a square and a pencil, alternating the pattern up the piece. then i use a chisel to dap along the line

Next i turn that chisel on it’s side and i remove the area that i dapped. this was a lot easier on walnut than bloodwood / cardinal wood.

It takes a lot more time and effort but it looks good and clean. this one wall side took about two hours to do. i’m going to work on it a bit every night and it should be brick walls soon. but it takes a light careful hand – you can very easily split the wood in half. but the result is amazing. After i have “layered” all of my bricks, i will fill in between the bricks with mortar (aka maple wood dust mixed with wood glue). I think the result will be fantastic

again i know this project has taken a long time but i really wanted to experiment with the technique and get it right

The brick wall is apart of the whole piece – the harmonica case, which is based on a depiction of a fellow artist, leaning against a wall playing his harmonica

I tell you what, the next lumberjocks contest that deals with boxes… I have you all beat ;)

show me some love on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Christina-Gurnham-Wood-Working/145804812139150

Then came root cutting. Several pieces of 2” thick X 2” wide were cut in the shape of roots (approx., 7”, 9”, 8”, 11”). I free handed the shape of the root. I left 1” on the end uncut for the sliding dove tail i will use to connect the roots to the stump

Concentrating hard so i don’t cut my fingers off

So once the roots were cut i played around with assembly of the roots. Teacher told me to go with a sliding dovetail joint for the roots going into the tree stump

Here’s an image of a piece of cherry wood sitting on top of the stump. I will use a 22” round piece of wood for the actual cake plate. Not sure how i will design the plate. still thinking about it – i really want it to look like a cross section of a tree stump.

For awhile i liked the idea of having branches coming out of the stump “supporting” the cake plate (really there for visuals). instead i think it makes the tree look more creepy and too busy. if you look on the right side of this picture you’ll see the printout of the limb. what are your thoughts?

that’s all i got :) it’s coming along!

I’ve been working on this project on and off for about 4 months, maybe longer – taking my time so i enjoy it making it. treating it like a piece of art and not a “task” i have to complete. I think it’s coming along.

Last night I did the finger joints. the idea is to make the bloodwood like like a brick wall:

As you can see the box itself is a little big for the harmonica but i am going to use foam to keep it from moving around.

the top and bottom have not been done yet. I was thinking for the bottom i’d have either a piece of ebony or walnut sticking out to make it look like he was standing on asphalt. Also you will notice his legs are a little big for his figure – I have to shape his legs so that way it looks like one leg is bent at the knee joint and the other leg is leaning against the wall

as for the “wall” i have experimented on how the brick will look on this piece. here is my test piece. i think it looks amazing

I think things are really starting to look like my sketch

anyways so that’s what I have to report

So the last time i blogged i have glued up the two 45 degree boards. Thursday the chop saw was in action and i was actually able to get 10 pieces out of the two boards. turns out you only need 8 of these pieces to make a circle (you know, math and all).

So here’s the log as it right now. Didn’t have time to glue because i was working on several other projects, but I feel good about this so far. I can get it done.

i also forgot to post a photo fo the soon to be escort card holders. Here we are:

the idea is to sand all of them and put a small slit down the middle to hold the cards. they are about dry so i am going to get ready to slice these soon.

On etsy if you do a search for many very nice cake plates that look rustic and woodsy. I first stumbled across this cake plate on etsy

If interested you can find the seller’s shop here:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/HensinDaisies?ref=seller_info

Now there’s a lot of good and bad with this design, good being it’s natural and pretty, it’s rustic and it’s just overall a neat idea of a cake plate for those who are doing an outdoor wedding. But i find issues with it structurally. Mainly the issue is with the plate itself – cross sectional parts of trees will split or usually will split over time. So if this is a piece you want to become a family heirloom – its not going to last. This piece is also made of what i believe is called base wood, which isn’t the strongest white wood available.

There are some other issues with the base – when you’re working with a chunk of wood that still has bark on it and the piece has not been kiln dried the piece has the potential to harbor bugs in the bark… and if you kiln dry the piece you’re likely to crack the wood because it’s a cross section. And if you air dry the base piece it’ll take forever. well maybe not forever but I do think the rule is 1” of thickness takes about 3-6 months to dry (if the wood is green to begin with). That piece looks at least 4-6” tall, so that’s time I don’t have to wait for the wood to dry. Not to mention just because it air dries doesn’t mean it won’t crack.

So we have issues with this design – it could crack, it could harbor bugs, or it could take forever to dry which is time i don’t have now. So I am going to do my best to create a piece that imitates a real tree stump, but one that will last a long time and feel wedding-y.

So i came up with the idea of gluing up some sort of log out of maple, and then glue a maple cake plate and then attach birch bark that I have. Doesn’t elegant but it looks beautiful in my head. I swear it does.

An example of birch bark – see very wedding-y

So i searched for ideas on how to glue up the hollow stump when i came across a fellow lumber jock’s idea for a jewelry chest:

shipwright's jewelry chest

What a brilliant idea! So i read his blog and started out on my own:

So far I cut four pieces of wood about 3” long, 1” thick. a 45 degree cut was cut in each piece.

These pieces we then flipped so the 45 degree joint was made into a 90 degree joint. The idea is for the back end to fit into that 90 joint. these two pieces will eventually be cut into smaller pieces to make a cylinder

Here’s an example from Shipwright’s blog of what we should get (please read his blog, it's really great):

the next step will be to cut these 90 degree pieces to the correct height for the stand. then we will fit together the cylinder and then glue up.

I want to note that the two 90 degree pieces are not glued together despite they are next to each other. it was just easier to glue them up next to each other.

if my design goes off without a hitch I will make two cake plates and sell one to my wedding cake baker who has express interest in my design.

Stay tuned!!!

www.christinagurnham.com

Some of you may know I had my first show In December, which immediately any money made from that that went toward the honeymoon, and of course taxes.

Basically I am doing two types of wood working this year:
- Wedding relate items for me or items to sell back to my wedding vendors
- Items for craft shows I will during the year

In theory, if everything goes well, the craft shows will fund my wedding and the crafts I make for myself will add a personal touch to my wedding

and so let’s dive in together!

I was surprised to see none of the nativity scene ornament sets moved. I originally on the first day priced them at $200 for the whole set. My dad gave me some advice that night and recommended that I break down the price on the set by individual price, then show the discounted price of $200. So i did that on Sunday, but business was slow and didn’t have any bites. I will list them on etsy and on my website and hopefully they’ll move.

There was a nice man who wants to commission me to make some harmonica cases for him (two). One made of maple burl, the other would have depiction of him in the intarsia style of him playing his harmonica. He showed me a few of his harmonica cases and he had quite a collection on him.

I am proud to say my business is in the black! My fellow crafters reported sales within $200-500 of mine, so I feel like I did a really good job for my first show. I am happy to have gotten the merchant account so i could accept credit cards. That accounted for over 3/4 of my business. also ending my prices in zero or five made making change a lot easier (tax was included in all prices)

We also had a video of me working on the crafts. Many people would initially tell my fiance that he did great work. He was quick to correct them and told them I did everything and people were amazed. One little girl was watching the video and she turned to my fiance and said “you do good work mister.” When i told her it was me who was doing the work she was like “you did this?!” and i proudly said “yup, women can do wood working too” to which the very nice lady in the next booth over shouted “you tell her Christina!”

The people who’s booths were next to me were very kind and gave me advice. They thought my booth was lovely and invited me to join their hand crafter’s guild. I already sent an email to join their Handcrafters Guild, so I’ll probably join up with them soon..

So for now i will list my items on etsy through the week to increase exposure.

Thanks for reading!!

So I am working on some intarsia Christmas ornaments that I will display at a Christmas show in December. I ran into the situation of having “odd” colored ornaments; I would stack cut some cardinals out of bloodwood and walnut and i’d end up with some great blood wood cardinals but then i’d have the opposite birds: walnut cardinals. Should i leave them the way i made them or should i try to make them prettyful? After seeing scrollergirl’s candle coasters, i was inspired to experiment with decoart’s staining antiquing medium

so we have some examples of Kathy Wise’s Christmas ornament angels and some walnut cardinals that I will turn into female cardinals.

I initially tried using the 1:1 ratio the bottle suggested, but i found that with some colors there was too much staining medium and it worked better to have more acrylic paint than staining medium. It depended on the color; some were more pigmented and stronger than others.

I would initially make the color i need using the acrylic paints and add a little less staining medium to acrylic. Once this was painted onto the wood, I would wipe it off with a paper towel. With some colors (like black onto blood wood) i’d leave the stain on the blood wood for 5 minutes and the effect wasn’t strong (the bloodwood is too oily i am guessing). why try to darken bloodwood? Because the face of the cardinal is part black.

I thought walnut wings looks a little funny on the angels so I used the stain with some white paint and lightened the wing color. good results IMO.

Maple stained well. Usually the acrylic and staining medium mixture just painted on and then wiped off moments later worked just perfect with maple. Walnut really absorbed the red paint/stain well. The yellow stain makes the wood look like yellowheart

Some photos of the cardinals. I also stained the brown parts of the cardinals with a yellow-brown:

I tried dyeing this angel with a blue top. It didn’t work well for some reason so i dyed it with some red. it came out with this neat psychedelic color. The skin was yellowheart:

The mixture seems to raise the grain just a little bit. I bought some sand paper and i will do some light sanding later.

I will also spray the pieces with a few coats of glossy polyurethane before gluing the parts together (the paint will reactivate if it gets wet so i am sure glue will make the colors spread).

Almost finished pieces