At the end of April I accepted a last minute commission for a retirement gift. The brief was to make a piece featuring the recipient’s favourite Bible verse, Joshua 1:9. The time frame was tight, complicated by a long weekend working in London, but I got it done. I wanted to try out a technique I’d seen on various reels. I had ordered some solid wood pieces and they were perfect for this design:

Making notes

I started off, in the same way as I do for my Bible journaling, in Adobe Illustrator for the design. I used the lion head as the symbol for courage, but also the representation of a faithful God through Christ (Rev 5:5). I sorted out cut paths for laser cutting the two contrasting woods (wenge and oak from realfinewoods) and printed the text onto smooth cartridge paper, as well as a guide outline for sticking the wood in place. The first line of text is gold leafed, and the rest coloured with Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils. The frame is an A4 size from Ikea (it’s what I had to hand at short notice) and I recut the mount. The mount was a little squarer in the frame than it appears in this pic!

Things I learnt

I chose solid wood for the lion’s head so that when I sanded back there was no inner core exposed as would have happened if I had used veneered plywood. Rounding off the edges of the laser cut pieces gives a wonderful embossed look and emphasises the shapes and form. But… wenge and oak are tough woods and it took a long time to sand back. The wenge also fractured along the grain in a couple of the thin places, but melded back together nicely. I applied molten beeswax to polish/seal the wood and buffed it to a sheen after it had completely solidified.

Taking into account the depth of the wood (3mm), I put a spacer of foamboard around the inside edge of the mount to add depth and create a mini-shadowbox effect. I didn’t want the wood to press against the glass (obviously).

Just for information

This piece took around 6-7 hours to make from start to end. The commissioner (a repeat customer) recognises the work that goes into bespoke artwork and their budget reflected this. They kindly gave permission for me to share the photo once the gift had been presented.

Fancy commissioning your own bespoke piece?

I prefer a bit longer to work on a commission than I had for this one, but I’m willing to consider any request. Just get in contact with your ideas/requests and we’ll go from there.