Eye Candy

Update:
I sold this box to Mike and Mati, a nice young couple that are giving it to his mom and dad for anniversary.

I won first place in a contest at Router Forums!
Sweet! There were 150 entries which were whittled down to 15 for the voting phase.
I get a $200 set of router bits that I can really use.

This won First place in the Fine Woodworking “Scraptacular”contest.
See it here http://www.finewoodworking.com/item/25618/scraptacular-contest-winners-announced

And Third place in the LJ contest.
See it here http://lumberjocks.com/awards/winter_2010/results/12

This was not as easy as it looks :-)
But it was fun to do.
I am taking artistic liscense with the Yin Yang guidelines of the contest. I am using strong contrasts to draw the eye to all areas of the box and make the viewer draw a conclusion.
So I started by making the basic box and then added the fat corner spline to the lower right front just to add some visual tension, to mix things up a little. It was intended to draw attention and add a whimsical feel to this box. The Fat Boy spline is a banded inlay, just strips of maple, bloodwood and wenge of varying thicknesses, fitted in tight and sanded flush, then the maple box body was sanded away which gives it the raised look. Then I started making the candies and played with several styles, discarding many, most of the small piece of wood I had intended to use, and which started this entire project rolling, didnt work after all. It was too random of a pattern of candy sizes and colors, and almost impossible to fit in the tray neatly and even harder to look at. So I started over, making all new candies and after a few weeks things started to come together. But then other bits of life happened along and this had to wait about 6 weeks. A recent trip to Disneyland, last November was one of those things that happened along, and it had an influence on the shaping and overall feel that this box evokes. I am not really copying anything in particular I saw while I was in the Park…its just more of a feeling…happy and contented I guess.
I wanted this box to look fun, if thats possible :-)

I came up with this concept several months back. You see, like most woodworkers, I too had been saving the small cut offs of many types of woods, some even having inlays in them and they reminded me of a bag of Allsorts licorice. They were too small to do anything with, but I kept hording them anyway, knowing something would come to mind. Thats when the candy dish idea started forming, but I wasnt sure how to proceed.

The box has very deep sculpting, the 3/4’’ sides are down to about 1/4’’ thick in a few places.
It is so easy to get carried away with the shaping, I was getting close to sanding through and exposing the edge of the bottom panel.

Update Sunday 7 pm: I posted 4 more photos and will add a few more with a little info in the comments section below.
Thanks for reading,
Andy

-- If I can do it, so can you. www.artboxesbyandy.com