Etsy Store Updated!

Finally got a few items finished and posted up on Etsy!  Back by popular demand is my Kids Flat Pack Plywood Rocking Chair (named “For those who like to Rock!”)suitable for ages 18 months to 5 year olds (for average sized kids).  I love this design and plan to make more of these over the summer to keep up with demand.  New to the store is the Chunky Monkey, an end grain Pine Cutting board that’s just over 2.25″ thick!  There are two versions with slightly different handholds on the ends.  Both boards feature rubber feet to help grip the counter as well as a food safe mineral oil finish.  Why Pine? Well Pine has some natural anti-bacterial properties that make it perfect for cutting board use, and by making it end grain the soft wood is plenty durable for cutting board use.  Boards come with simple maintenance instructions.

Check out all these items at my Etsy Store

The Russians are Coming!

Lately, my Flat pack rocking chair has been getting a whole lot of love from a Russian woodworking site.  From what I can tell it’s a forum post on flat pack furniture that people are adding to daily (over 18 pages last I checked).  What are they saying about my chair? Who knows I don’t speak Russian, and Google translate isn’t much help either.  I’m hoping it’s something along the lines of “Wow, what an amazing chair, I want to buy 10,000 copies and I’ll pay $500 each, let me just go to the bank and fill an enormous brief case full of money so I can send it to this incredible man to make me these chairs”.  Yeah, that’s probably what they’re saying…

52 Create – Kids Canoe Paddle

52 Create, my weekly creative outlet for 2011.  While I’m super busy with biathlon stock building, it’s hard not to make a little something for my daughter once in awhile…  I had some left over maple and walnut from last week’s cutting board (which were made from left overs themselves…)  So using the same lamination procedure, I glued them up and ended up with a nice little paddle, custom sized for my daughter (hopefully she doesn’t grow too much by the summer…)  I’ll finish it with some left over polyuerethane, spar varnish would be better but I’m trying to use up old stuff, and she’s not going to be putting serious hours of canoeing with this thing. Can’t wait for her to try it out in a canoe, but for now I guess a chair will have to do…

52 Create – Wooden Kids Book

52 Create, my weekly creative outlet for 2011…  My little (and only) niece is celebrating her first Easter, too young for chocolate, so how about her very own personalized book?  I’ve had this idea in the back of my head for about a year, and I even cut the wooden blanks out for the pages at least a month ago, but it wasn’t until the last couple of days that I designed the page in illustrator and printed them out on t-shirt transfer paper.  The wood is 1/8″ plywood and the designs are simply ironed on and covered with a thin coat of spray on lacquer (food safe of course!).
I think these could be a real hit on Etsy as once the design is done, it’s fairly quick to assemble, and I could put a personalized name on each book.  The only issue is I don’t feel the t-shirt transfer will be very durable.  I’ll be keeping an eye on this book to see how well it holds up.

My other 52 Create Projects

My Etsy Store.

52 Create – Flat Pack Rocking Chair

52 Create, my weekly creative output for 2011.  I guaranteed something more ambitious this week, and here it is!  I call it “For those who Like to Rock”.  It’s a flat pack rocking chair made out of baltic birch plywood.  It’s sized for a toddler (1.5-4 years) and assembles without and glue or screws.  I’ve had several different variations of this in my many sketchbooks, and I even made a prototype a few years back, however this is a full finished product.

 

This rocking chair is now for sale on my Etsy Site, feel free to stop by and make a purchase….

 

My other 52 create projects…

52 Create – Cell Phones (Mobiles)

52 Create, my year long project to create something new and home/hand made on a weekly basis throughout 2011.  I’ve done several toys already, because really, making toys is fun to do, but not quite as fun as the reactions from my 17 month old daughter…  I can assure you all the projects will not be toys (nor will they be all made of wood), but a good portion likely will be.

So as I was saying, many of these projects are inspired by my daughter.  For some reason, she is fascinated by cell phones (mobiles).  My wife hardly ever uses hers, and I don’t even have one, so where she got this fascination is beyond me.  I had some scrap maple left over so I designed 4 different phones.  One is the classic “original” cell phone like you saw in all those 80’s movies, the other three are variations on the “candy bar” phone.  I used a wood burning pen to do the key pads, and the antennas are made from maple dowel that was burnt using a torch.  I likely won’t finish them with anything as maple is a very safe wood to chew on (we do pour the sap all over pancakes…).  I think I’ll put the original phone up on Etsy, not sure if I’m pleased with the wood burning on some of the others, but we’ll see.

 

My other 52 Create projects.

Of Bicycles and Amsterdam

Back from travelling and a ton of pictures to sort through.  After a couple of weeks in both Amsterdam and Berlin, I have many rolls to develop, would have been even more but there was a fair amount of rain that made picture taking a little less enjoyable.  Berlin was incredibly dark and overcast, that combined with the early sunsets meant not a lot of light in general.

Anyways, in Amsterdam everyone rides bikes, I was truly jealous not to live somewhere where this is the culture. The one thing that really stood out for me were the bikes seen above that could carry loads!  During the week I was there I saw variations of this bike carrying everything from kids, to lumber (sheets of plywood) to a couch (two seater love seat, yes I’m serious).  These seem like such a great idea as you can haul your kids as well as your groceries, and your precious cargo is right in front of you unlike in a chariot type trailer.

Check out their website.

Made by Joel

My new favourite DIY/crafty blog is – made by Joel.  Joel posts many of the crafts and toys that he makes with his two kids. It’s all very creative and just how I hope to be with my kids when they are old enough to enjoy crafts.  It’s like if you had Mr. Dressup for your father, awesome.

Joel’s also got a book deal in the making, so keep an eye out for it!