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The beauty in the damage

The beauty in the damage

I have been a wood lover for far longer than I have been a woodworker. I often admired (still do) the beautiful patterns in the wood, the colors , the rings, the stories. But when I first started making my items I was always looking for “clean” wood. I thought my wood burning designs had to stand out against a stark white maple background, but, being a forager, this was not often what I was given. Gathering fallen wood from my property or my friends wood piles or the side of the road, often I get soggy wood that needs to be dried out a bit before I can work with it. This wetness seeps into the wood often creating irregularities and patterns. My frustration has evolved into fascination with these “damaged” pieces of wood that I work with. “Mother Nature’s watercolors” is how I have come to think of it. It turns out that not surprisingly, I am not the only one who has found beauty in the damage. The term for it is spalted, and many a woodworker has come to value these pieces highly.
Perfection is boring, give me your discards any day.

spring planting

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During the long, snowy, winter I could not stop daydreaming about warmer, greener weather. Visiting local greenhouses was my great escape out of the cold where I could soak up some fresh oxygen and imagine I was somewhere tropical. On one of these excursions I found myself in the bromeliad section and started visualizing the possibilities of my woodworking and these gorgeous little plants going hand in hand. I had to wait until all the snow melted to break the saw out of the garage and get to work, but just in time for spring, my new planters are here, and ready for sale! http://www.etsy.com/listing/186572091/birch-tree-air-plant-holder?ref=shop_home_active_1

Keep a look out for my hanging wood slice planters, available soon!

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a week of words

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This week, my wood burning has strayed from my norm. Usually I do all nature inspired, organic, designs, but this has been the week of words and numbers. It started with a few custom requests from friends and acquaintances. A date on a baseball bat, a pet food reminder magnet, a note for the delivery guy, and a clean/dirty dishwasher magnet. After the response I got to a picture I posted of the dishwasher magnet, I was pondering whether I should add it to my store, when I got a definitive sign that I should. So I made more. And the words just kept tumbling on after that. New nature slogan magnets, “take a hike” “stay wild” and “go explore” are a few in the new line up (coming soon)

What do you think of this direction?

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I’ve been daydreaming of summer during these cold, seemingly endless, snowy, winter days. You can see where my mind is going in the subject matter of my latest projects. I’ve bee making a lot of landscape and camping scenes and new botanical studies, including these wood burned fern coasters. Hopefully spring will be here soon, here’s to hoping that the groundhog was wrong. These coasters, along with other designs are now available in my etsy shop http://www.etsy.com/shop/ForageWorkshop

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what is etsy anyway?

I have been thinking about this topic a lot lately. What IS Etsy? I’ve been selling online with Etsy for the last couple of months and have been so immersed in it, that I’ve forgotten that there are still a lot of people out there (I’m looking at you, Dad) that have no clue what it is or how it works. Before I was a seller, or really even a buyer, I thought, like many others, that it was just Ebay for crafters. Not so. Ebay is Etsy’s rough and tumble older brother. Years ago, I was an avid eBayer, buying, selling, the whole bit. And while it is a wonderful platform, and you can literally find ANYTHING there, Etsy is well…more refined. There is no bidding on Etsy, so no wars with strangers or cursing at your computer in the middle of the night when there is 1 minute left in the auction and you have just been outbid. On Etsy, there are many lovely “shops” which are like mini websites with amazingly talented and kind people who will do there best to help you have the best shopping experience out there. There are no “wars”, just sellers helping customers, sellers helping sellers and even customers helping customers! It blows my mind what is possible and how creative people are. Things you never dreamed were out in the world suddenly, you can’t live without. If you didn’t really know what Etsy was about, I hope I’ve shed some light. Go take a look, find something you never knew was exactly what you wanted.

 

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