Irish Setter Ornament

For my next project, I created an ornament using the Irish Setter silhouette I created for the Welcome sign.  The setter silhouette was cut out of a Basswood round with the bark still attached.  The ornament is approximately 4" in diameter and about 5/8" deep.  Once complete with the setter cut, I drilled a hole through the top of the ornament and added a piece of jute to hang the ornament.  Afterwards several light coats of shellac were applied and a black felt backer was added to make the setter cut pop.

The ornament could be customized with a woodburned kennel name, dog name, and / or the year to give it a more personal touch.

Here's a side view of the ornament to show the depth of the cut:

Like the ornament?  It will be for sale soon at my Etsy store - stay tuned!

Cub Scout Plaque #2 - Now with the Cub Scout Logo

Following up on the Cub Scout plaque with the Boy Scouts of America logo, I decided to go for a challenge and create a plaque with the Cub Scout logo.  This required creating a silhouette of the logo and then cutting out some text with a scrollsaw - never an easy task.  There were a total of 18 cuts and the logo was placed so that text could be wood burned on to the plaque.

I created the product out of basswood from Michaels.  It hasn't been coated yet, but the final product will be coated with several coats of shellac (after text has been wood burned on).  To finish the piece  a piece of black felt was added to the back of the plaque and a picture hanger was added.  The final product is ~11.5" x 8.5".

Now available on Etsy - order your very own

Cub Scout Plaque

I recently needed to create a plaque to recognize the Committee Chair of our Cub Scout pack. Rather than going with a generic coin or store bought item, I decided to try my hand at creating one.  For this project, I cut out a silhouette of the boy scout logo.  There were a total of 19 cuts (the eagle head is attached through a small piece of wood at the beak).  The text was wood burned.  I printed out the text onto a piece of paper then pressed it into the wood using a pencil.  After getting the character lines, I burned each character by hand.  Unfortunately there was a small knot in the wood right at the top of the number 3.

I created the product out of wood from Michaels and covered it with several coats of shellac.  Afterwards a piece of black felt was added to the back of the plaque and a picture hanger was added.  The final product is ~12" x 9.5".

Now available on etsy!

Sophie

Following my work on the Dugan portrait I was looking for other portraits to make when the scrollsaw magazine I subscribe to announced a contest.  The contest had a variety of categories, but one of them was for fretwork - the intricate cuts in wood, usually seen in a portrait or cuckoo clock.

I didn't have any great pictures available at the time so I took to Flickr to look for options.  After not finding anything that jumped out at me, my wife suggested looking for English Cockers.  Very expressive faces, and somewhat curly fur that shows up well in silhouette portraits.  I found a photo that I fell in love with and reached out to the photographer to get permission to use it.  The depth of field was fantastic on the photo and came out extremely well as seen below.

In talking to the owner, Sophie had been their baby who had recently passed.  

I cut the portrait, framed it and sent it on to the photographer - now her family has a reminder of Sophie in a work of art.

The photo was cut from 1/8" Baltic birch plywood with a felt backer.  The portrait was cut to 8" x 10" and framed to 11" x 13".  Lightly sanded and coated with polyurethane.

Irish Setter Welcome Sign

Following along with the previous post: Irish Setter Leash Holder, my next project was to create a 'Welcome' sign.  For this project, I used the same pattern - but instead of leaving the bone solid, I added the word 'Welcome'.  The could also be made into a kennel sign, as the word 'Welcome' could easily be replaced with a kennel name.

Like before, I created the product out of 3/8" plywood and stained it red mahogany.  It was then coated with several coats of polyurethane.  The final product is ~11" x 9.5".

Stay tuned - this item is coming for sale on etsy soon!

An Irish Setter Leash Holder

A while back, I was looking for Irish Setter scrollsaw patterns on the internet and wasn't coming up with much. Nearly all of the patterns that I was able to find were either of very generic setters or were field setters. One of the few patterns that came up online from a scroller known as Arpop. It was a dog bone with a field setter silhouette on top. I wasn't a fan of the field setter design, so I adapted it to be a silhouette of a confirmation setter.  Within the bone, I added 4 small hooks and added a wall hanger on the back so that the design could be used as a leash holder.

I created the product out of 3/8" plywood and stained it red mahogany.  It was then coated with several coats of polyurethane.  The final product is ~11" x 9.5".

Stay tuned - this item is going to be for sale soon on etsy!

Not Just Dogs - A Self Portrait

After several successes at doing Irish Setter portraits, I wanted to try my hand at doing people. To do so, I took a school photograph of my brother and I when I was 5 and my brother was 2. I spent days working on the pattern for this one. Working on patterns of people seemed much harder than working on patterns for the dogs.

The end result was really good, but I'm not sure if I'll do many more portraits of people -- it was a lot harder to get a pattern I was satisfied with (being a self portrait may have had something to do with it though):