Betty's Carving Blog

I hope you enjoy the blog for wood carving. You can visit sales at create space by following the links provided or visit our website for all our our how to videos.

Friday, December 31, 2010

Carving indoors

If you're ready to carve with that knew Christmas present a set of carving tools and the weather is really bad outside you can carve indoors. Carving indoors can create a problem with lighting, if you're getting older and carving indoors can create quite a mess. If you have a wooden floor, you can sweep the floor and there is no reason you cannot carve indoors and have an easy cleanup.
I do not use my big holding device on my large tool stand. I use a small worktable that I purchased on sale for $15. It folds up and is light weight and easy to maneuver. It's great for him carving, but I'm not sure I would use it with mallet tools.
Keep a broom and dust pan handy and you can contain most of your mess.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Have you ever wanted to do relief carving but your drawing skills are something to be desired? there is a good trick for getting your wood to show your pattern without having to draw directly on the wood.
I simply draw a small picture of what I would like to do on a piece of paper, scan it to my computer and print on my laser printer. If you have good picture editing software, you can make a poster and change the size of your scanned piece of paper to fill whatever size piece of wood you have to carve.
You simply look at your print preview, adjust the size of the printing and send it to your laser printer. A medium or higher quality printing works well for transferring the photos to your wood. I cut out the drawing, tape it together place it on the wood and take a hot iron and iron the drawing directly onto the wood.

There are several things you should be careful about one is to be careful where you place the tape so that you do not run a hot iron and melt the tape and you want to have the print in position so that you do not move The drawing as you iron it onto the wood. If the word is bowed and has not been sanded You could have a problem with the transfer. But you can see from the picture below that my word is not a flat surface

you can see from this picture that the drawing has transferred and I have not had the problem of carving over many lines were I tried to correct the drawing as I drew.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Carving a Profile Wood Spirit

When I am using my cotton wood bark for carving my Wood Spirits I find that I have a lot of leftover pieces that are not fit for carving a full face. So if you learn to carve a profile or wood spirit. You can save a lot of the wood and make it useful.



You can see by the examples that it takes very little space to create a profile or three quarter face.
It is also a great way to learn how to carve if you mess up a piece of wood that would otherwise be useless. It's not such a big deal. When you learn to carve the face the nose and the mouth of the mustache you do not have to keep the face symmetrical because you only have one side. You use the same tools and have the same principles, but it's a great way to learn.



You can check out my links, and view my sales for How to Carve a Profile Wood Spirit plus you can also go on YouTube and see a short clip of the same.

https://www.createspace.com/254405
http://thehowtodoit.com/Carving.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqZMLZzraAI