Crafts

I have to preface this project by addressing the materials I used. The wood was given to me by a guy that had got it from Gibson gituar Company. There were several pieces about 16" to 18" long. Scrap left over from the usable pieces that were made into the insturments. Now I am funny about wood. I like it and many a time I will have a chunk in my hands and like these it will have a nice color and an interesting grain to it. I think about the wood and how it once was part of a tree that stood majestically in a forest somewhere. I am not a tree hugger but do feel every part of that tree should be used (since it was cut down anyway). So after giving a piece like that a good going over I put it up somewhere feeling I will turn it into something later. That was the case here.

The latex paint I used to stain it was from some of the hundreds of cans I aquire at yard sales for almost nothing. It can be left over artist paints. Many time people will ask "Do you want this old paint?" You bet I do. Why put it in a landfill? If you are crafty you know that some of the smaller stores have discontinued colors on the shelf that costs very little. The big box stores used to offer returned paint at a fraction of the original cost and I would check every time I visited one of them. I got some nice quality paint for a cheap price.

After I had cut out the individual parts I had to lightly sand them before I stained them. Scraps of old sandpaper used on larger projects was used for this. I like to get all the use out of something I can. After they were stained and dried they needed some kind of finish to enhance the grain so instead of spraying a clear coat on them which would hamper them from fitting together smoothly, I rubbed cooking oil on them. It made the wood shine a bit and really brought the grain out.

So that's how I work and my routine if you want to call it that. I like to make something out of this or that, that has been set aside or discarded by others. It is a satisfying feeling for me.

So this was a fun project I did with my scroll saw. I traced the Pelican onto a piece of wood using carbon paper. Using a fine blade on the saw so the parts would fit close together I cut out my parts. When cut out I thinned down latex paint and "stained" the parts to the corresponding colors. I have 3 daughters and a wife so you know I had to make four of them. But a word of advice...when doing something like this, make more than one because as you are set up to do it will be easier because you will get the "Why didn't you make me one" or "Will you make me one"? That means setting up again. I stained them all a little different so as to personalize them and placed their names and the date on the base I made for each one. You can take them down and take them apart and put them back together and have a bit of fun with them.