Tall Santa

I mostly cave what is known as Old World Santa or Folk Santa.  In the US we are used to seeing what is basically the Coca Cola Santa.  He is plumper and wears the two piece suit.  The Old World Santa is based on the Saint Nicolas or Kris Kringle legend and wears a long single piece robe with hood.

This is the largest Santa that I have carved to date standing just over 9 inches tall.  He is carved from basswood also known as Linden wood.  He took about four hours to carve and paint.  He will be one of my first carvings to be offered for sale on ETSY.  More about ETSY in a later post.

He is about 90% done in the picture above.

Here he is completed

I basically never carve the same Santa twice so all of the santas are one of a kind.  I find that most carvers become comfortable with a specific look to their carvings and that gives the carvings a sameness I am trying hard to avoid.

Go make some wood chips.

Bruce

The Tale of A Perfectly Good Spoon

Carved Wooden Spoons
Now the problem with an addiction to wood is that everything that is wooden is fair game for improvement, remodeling or just plain messing with.  Here are some of my carved spoons (and one spatula).  All of these came from a local kitchen store and then I went to work on them.

This next spoon was carved from scratch out of Mahogany.  This one has already been claimed by Pam.  This type of spoon is known as a Welsh Love Spoon.

As always if you click on the picture it will enlarge in your browser.  All of the spoons are of my design.  If you are wondering the yellow mat they are on has a one inch square grid and is a cutting mat for rolling cutters.  However these work very well as a carving mat as they don't damage you knives if you accidentally cut into them.

Bruce

What Can You Do WIth A Scrap of 1X4

Any one who knows or lives around a wood worker knows we just can't part with a piece of wood bigger than sawdust.  Pam will attest that I suffer from that affliction.  So I had a small piece of clear pine.  Nothing special about 6 inches of a 1x4.  What to do with it?  Well carve it of course.  Now Pine is not the easiest wood to carve.  But how can it help but behave when it is being carved into a Santa.

Same problem but a piece of  2x4.  Same answer.

This primitive Santa is from one of my wood carving magazines.  So always consider what may be hiding in those little pieces of wood you don't know what to do with.

Bruce