When Marcus sends out boxes, they are always two things: treasure boxes and challenges. There’s all this wonderful pieces of wood and they’re asking: “What am I?” and then it’s me who has to figure it out. For some of them the question could be answered.

First two pieces of burl:

As you can see the wood is very thin, at the most 2mm, which made sanding quite difficult. I made them by firmly wrapping tape around the wood to create a container and then I filled it with resin. This, of course, creates a rather cylindrical resin shape which then needs to be evened out. I’m pretty happy with how both of them turned out, fire and water respectively.

The next three pieces look rather different but are all from the same piece of wood. The last parcel Marcus sent contained some bog oak with which I instantly fell in love. It pretty clearly told me that it wanted to be SOMETHING so I took the first piece and tried SOMETHING. I have some golden pearl pigment I am not completely happy with, as it is heavier than the resin and sinks to the ground, but which for the very same reason became idea for this project.

The original piece of wood was maybe 2″ by 3″, already sawed into a disc with that sharp angle on one side. I cast it in a big slab, pouring the gold pigment resin first and then filling up with mostly clear resin.

This is the “central piece”:

I cut off all the resin around the wood and cut the top into a rhombus, matching the angle at the bottom. The gold pigment sunk into the gaps in the wood, filling it with veins of shimmer. As you can see there were still some bubbles trapped in the wood, but they’re actually more visible in the pic than in reality. I’m sooooooo happy with how that turned out because I was quite afraid to ruin the gorgeous wood.

An speaking of the precious wood, it would have been a crime to throw away the scraps:

This used to be the top of the wood. I cut it into an oval and rounded the sided before polishing. The wire lies in a groove to keep it from slipping, but I still need to glue it to the cabochon with some resin. Same goes for the next piece.

This one’s a bit smaller and only a tiny bit of wood remains, but the colours are so gorgeous. It’s fascinating how the same cast yielded such different shades. All that was left after that were small pieces of resin, but even they got used, but that project isn’t finished yet, so you’ll have to wait. Those five pieces represent about 15 hours of sanding and polishing and sawing between, not to mention an open wound the size of a big bean on my left palm because I’m stupid.

Always wear your protective gloves, kids.