What gifts have you made?

Published: Sat, 06/01/24

Updated: Sat, 06/01/24

Howdy !

This time of year ushers in the end of another school year, graduations, plans for summer vacations, and weddings. Depending on what stage of life you're in, it seems wedding invites can go in phases. I don't have any on the calendar yet for this summer, but I did have two to attend last year.

Conversations with multiple members ordering items to create special gifts for upcoming weddings made me think about weddings. With all of you carvers out there I was thinking there are probably a lot of awesome and creative gifts being made, and it would be fun to see all of the ideas out there. If you’re one of those carvers responsible for creating a wedding gift or two, I hope you’ll consider sharing it with me.

It's only fair that I share with you the wedding gifts I made last year and a little bit of my thought process that went into how I finished them.

I carved the classic Love Birds pattern on a 10-inch flat plate for one of the gifts.

For the other, I made a thicker wine glass holder so that I could carve the names and wedding date into the sides, similar to the wine bottle holder.

I wanted to add color to both but wasn’t sure what colors each wedding couple would like. I decided to use the colors that were used on the wedding invitations! They would surely enjoy them on their gift if they liked the colors enough to use on their invitation. They could also display the invitation with the gift in the future if they decided to display memories from their wedding.

So how about you? Have you created some unique wedding (or graduation) gifts you’d like to share?

Feel free to send pictures of your creations to troy@mychipcarving.com

June's Monthly Project is almost ready. Look for it in next week's newsletter!

In the meantime, here's one last look at May's Monthly Project

Coasters!

1 Pattern Carved 4 Different ways!

This month's project started from a picture submitted after the email about looking for patterns in everyday objects.

Watch the short video to see some of the Modern and Old World Style cuts

The patterns are a combination of traditional Swiss-style chip carving and Old World Style on 4" x 4" squares.

The lettering is the Lucida Calligraphy font, which is part of the Letters and Numbers Course!

Order your Coasters now!

Add Catalpa and Cypress to the list of carving woods!

I enjoy making furniture and other things. Years ago a catalpa tree was cut in my neighborhood and I saved two sections of the trunk. I heard carvers like it. The bowl and plaque were carved in catalpa.

I also was given some planks of cypress from a collapsed water tower. The beer stein was made and carved of cypress.

Both wood species have been great to carve. The catalpa was air dried. I pealed the bark off immediately. It was dry in a couple months.

I’ve been chip carving for about 25 years.

The stein has Ottawa in big letters and the title burgermeister under that. Burgermeister is German for mayor. I gave the stein to the mayor of Ottawa at an October Fest

Arnie

Thanks for sharing Arnie! I never realized Catalpa was a good carving wood, but now I do. I like the color of the catalpa, too. All of the carvings came out excellent! I'm certain carving the round bowl and stein presented some challenges, but the results are exceptional.