I’ve been highlighting some of my artistic struggles in previous posts, and I intend to do so again, although this time it is less of an explicit failure because the work is still a work-in-progress. I know that when I create, my feelings about my artworks can change upon altering one small detail or looking at it from a different perspective. Other times, I simply look at the artwork and feel a sort of satisfied disappointment; feeling happy that I persevered, but being ultimately unhappy with the result. I feel as though that is, to an extent, how I am going to feel about the woodworking projects I intend to discuss below.

The first project that I had to do with wood was a birdhouse. I’m going to be completely honest, I am not the best at math and even simple adding and subtracting confuses me in the right circumstance. That definitely occurred while working on the birdhouse. The wood planks that we used in class were not large enough to serve as a side to my birdhouse, and so I had to ensure that I measured what I needed while using the wood to its full potential so that I created the least amount of waste possible. 

I ended up over-measuring and creating one too many sides and ultimately confusing the heck out of myself. I can’t say that I’m surprised, although I genuinely tried to be organized, and that did not work out for me. However, I did get to try out a tool that has the capabilities of burning into wood, and it was difficult to use at first. I was definitely a little over-confident when I first tried using it, although I personally think that as a novice, the pattern I burned onto the roof of birdhouse isn’t half bad. 

There are definitely some things that I like about the birdhouse, such as my cardboard mockup, which was understandably easier and will likely look nicer (even with the painters tape all over it) than the final wood piece. Either way, I’ve almost completed it, and in all honesty, I’m going to feel really relieved when it’s done. Somehow, crafting with wood is more difficult when the lines are all straight than when you need to create a curved object, which brings me to my next project: the pull toy.

The pull toy was easy to design, just as the birdhouse was, and even though I thought it was going to be more difficult to create, so far it has been surprisingly easier. Although, I’d imagine that it would have been a lot more difficult if I had not started out with the birdhouse. For the pull toy, I decided to design a centipede, or at least a non-existent creature that is similar to a centipede (my parents thought it was a caterpillar, but as long as it comes across as a slithering bug, I’m content).

The criteria for the birdhouse was simple in that we needed to create a birdhouse, nothing more nothing less. But with the pull toy, we needed to not only understand how to create a pull toy but also add another moving part aside from the wheels. As it will be shown in my preliminary sketches, I decided to make the legs of the centipede move as my other moving component. It may not look as “creepy-crawly” as I would have liked, but I’m content with the design overall and it should be interesting to see how I complete it.