I made it to the wood store last week and purchased the birds eye maple I needed for my Carousel horse intarsia. I also picked up a few other boards of wood while there -

So I worked on the horse head this week. It was taking about an hour to cut and fit 3 pieces of wood. I still have to work on the fit of some of the pieces, and will have to re-cut at least one piece. But this gives you an idea of how it's going to look!

I still haven't figured out what color to make the "gem" on it's chest, or the saddle seat.

Happy 4th of July everyone!

We spent the day at my folks. Built them a raised bed flower garden in their front yard. Forgot to get pictures - will have to next time I'm there.

What else have I been up to? Got a few more listings on Artfire and Etsy. Both sites are having "Christmas in July" promotions - do a search for either "Christmas in July" or CIJ to see what everyone is offering. I've got my patterns ( http://www.talloakscreations.artfire.com/ ) for $5 each

And I'm reducing my Christmas ornaments at both http://www.woodngoods.artfire.com/ and http://www.woodngoods.etsy.com/ .

Tweedle Dee intarsia version is completed! I even managed to get him listed on both sites! :)

And I found out that my Draft Horse intarsia piece was featured on the site HandMade News. Here's the link to the article: http://www.handmadenews.org/article/index.php?id=1965

Here's another version of Tweedle Dumb. The difference? This one was done using the intarsia method.

What's intarsia? Rather than using one type of wood and cutting the pieces out like a puzzle, Intarsia uses different types of wood, and each segment is cut independant of the other pieces. The grain direction is different for each segment. And in this case, no colors, dyes, paints were used. What you are seeing is the natural colors of the different woods.

I used leapord wood, satinwood, purple heart, blood wood, aspen (the green wings!) maple, walnut, oak, and a couple other exotic woods that I don't know the name of.

So - which do you prefer and why?