I want to help you make it real. It could be a cherished keepsake, something that fits perfectly, a silly inside joke nobody would expect in a woodcarving, or just a fun afternoon activity. It's up to you.
A set of coasters, carved and filled with acrylic, then sealed with shellac so they can take a wet glass. A family portrait spread across the set works especially well — one face per coaster — and so do pets and logos. It does not have to be a photograph: an abstract pattern carved once and filled in a different color per coaster makes a set that reads as a set.
From $60 — Four for $60 · Six for $80 · Eight for $100.
Business logos, house signs, family names, quotes and jokes. Fine detail carves cleanly — script lettering, lettering that curves around a border, figures, line work — and the filled relief keeps it readable across a room.
From $50
A board carved with a child's name and whatever they are deep into that month — unicorns, mermaids, diggers, dinosaurs — drawn as outlines, cut in relief and primed white. It arrives blank. They paint it. The drawing can be cut into the surface or left standing proud with the background cleared away — two quite different looks from the same drawing. What they end up with is a picture made entirely of their own favorite things, with their name in the middle of it, and an afternoon spent making it theirs.
From $30
A one-person snack board — a dished well for the food, a carved and filled design on the shoulder, and a thumb hole so you can carry it to the sofa in one hand.
From $40
Small carved keepsakes — ornaments, keyrings, gift tags. Names carve well at this size, so a set with one name per piece is a common ask: stockings, place settings, or a whole class of blanks for the children to paint themselves. Choose bare to paint yourself, sealed in the natural wood, or hand-painted by me.
From $20
A shelf built around your collection instead of a grid you have to make things fit. Every compartment is cut to one piece — the tall one gets a tall niche, the squat one a squat niche, the tiny one a slot that suits it. Nothing rattles around in a space too big for it and nothing gets left out. The same trick fits a drawer — cutlery, tools, craft supplies, each in a compartment cut for it. It ends up looking made for your things, because it was.
From $30
Things cut to fit something that already exists — an opening in a floor, a gap nobody makes a part for, an object that turned up without a home. You measure it, or I do, and it comes back sized to that one spot. Made in wood, so it reads as part of the house rather than something bought and added to it.
A vent cover cut to the opening you actually have, in wood, instead of the handful of sizes and finishes a hardware store stocks. Long runs, odd dimensions and openings nobody makes a stock register for are the normal case, not the exception — and a wood cover disappears into a wood floor in a way a stamped metal one never does.
A solar system that holds coats. A bed shaped like a fire engine. None of it was on a list. If you have something in your head that nobody sells, that is the kind of thing I most want to hear about.
