scroll saw – ReCreations

9 October 20229 October 2022

Voyage

This new project is one of the most ambitious I’ve crafted. I was unsure of where to categorize it in my ‘gallery’ as it includes papercraft, recycled materials and woodcraft. It’s also the largest piece I’ve made – the frame is 50cm square.

The body of the ship and the seagulls are moulded with paper clay, and the waves formed from torn sheets of paper painted with watercolours. The masts are cut with a scroll saw from scraps of wood and jointed together. The sails are recycled cotton, cut from an old sheet. I tried different experiments to shape the sails as though a strong wind was blowing, before finally using a heavy starch, together with shaped paper supports behind them. The rigging ropes are made from unraveled cotton cord.

The frame is only 4cm deep, so once again I had to massage and adapt my original concept to fit, without losing its 3D perspective. (The original design was a 3-masted ship!)

While I can always identify aspects that could be better, overall I’m quite happy with the final project.

[Click near the top of the pictures to enlarge]

12 October 202025 November 2020

ReCreating for Christmas – A white Christmas

Recycled Plastic milk cartons are the basis of these white Christmas designs.

After completing my Angels scrollsaw projects, I made a variation to the designs by adding wings, halos and hymn sheet cut from the plastic. It gives a delicate and slightly transparent effect.

A heat gun is used to shape the cut out pieces, either by hand (with thick gloves!) or by bending the warmed plastic around a piece of dowel.

One of the biggest challenges of working with plastic milk cartons is that food grade 2 plastic is virtually impervious to gluing. After many experiments with different glues, a hot glue gun was the most successful, however, the slight transparency of the plastic means that any glue used can be seen.

With this in mind I created two designs that slot together, rather than glue.
1. An entire “heavenly host” of small angels for table decoration. The heads are cut from pine. These require just one dob of glue to join the head / body / wings.
2. A slice-form Christmas tree, no glue at all!
Both of these decorations ‘glow’ as they stand above flameless tea lights.

12 October 20202 November 2020

ReCreating for Christmas – Angels

Using my scroll saw and offcuts of 16mm melamine, these angels hold flameless tealight candles. There are two designs.

Once the shape was cut and sanded, I used white gloss acrylic paint on both the cut mdf edges and the surface. The wing outlines are cut from 3mm mdf and painted. I experimented with alcohol inks on synthetic paper and used the results to ‘fill’ the wings by gluing the paper to the back.

9 October 202020 September 2023

Kitchen shelving into Bud Vases

A kitchen renovation left a pile of old melamine shelving which inspired this collection of bud vases. The shelving is 16mm laminated mdf (medium density fibreboard). It was a design challenge to create traditionally 3D objects from flat shelves! Test tubes are used to hold the flowers and these are removable for cleaning.
The designs are cut with a scroll saw and the cut edges painted. I was curious to see if alcohol inks would take on the laminated surfaces. I experimented with various techniques to obtain the different finishing effects.

8 October 20202 November 2020

ReCreating for Christmas – Nativity candle holder

I’ve recently learnt to use a scroll saw which opens up a whole new world of design! As a “rookie”, I’m just using up scraps of wood from my husband’s work shed at the moment while I practise.

This nativity candle holder is made in pine. Because the figures fit together like a jigsaw, there was no room for error in the cutting! The base piece allows for the figures to either stand within each other, or to be separated.

I also made the white nativity below from 16mm melamine offcuts and painted the raw edges. The contrast faces are cut from unlaminated 3mm mdf, painted with a satin finish.