1 - Getting-Started

This project is in 2 parts: carving the rabbit, flower and mole frieze along the top; and carving the low relief lettering itself. If you want to fast forward to the lettering, then it's the last 2-3 lessons. 

The design is for the bedroom of little Freya. Who else? - but actually this sign would also work well in other contexts, a house sign for example. A nice feature of the frieze is the absence of background. This saves a lot of work; we only need to do a little tidying up from the back.

The wood: I know some members have a problem finding wood to carve so I thought this time I'd have a go on one of those readily-available chopping boards that you'll find in a home store. The board is made of Hevea, a tree from the rubber family (this one from Thailand); a wood that's quite commonly used for this sort of purpose. It was a bit brittle but, as you can see, with a little care carved quite well. Go for tight grain and as heavy a board as possible.

A lot of chopping and bread boards are made from kiln-dried Beech or Maple. These are physically very hard woods to carve so not the best choice for carving.

Colour: Most of these boards are jointed from narrower pieces. Look for the most uniform colour. Have a look at the very end of the final video in this project for how I sited our design in relation to the wood colour of the board.