Bears and Bees

I named this bear Adam, as he is the first of his kind. He stands 5'6" tall and is 3'7" at his widest point. He is carved from white spruce.

This is the bear I thought I was going to able to carve on my first try some 14 years ago. Better late than never.

Eyes, claws and teeth are all hand carved. I used "Ebony" and "Sedona Red" stains in the mouth and I also dry-brushed some white enamel onto the teeth before I applied several coats of matte clear sealer.

The beehive was made of cedar boards and a cedar shake roof. I carved a cartoon-ish bee character on each side of every super.

Craig

Also, here's a quick teaser for our next post! Check back to see the full video of us unloading our package bees.

Craig's Post - Carvings

After weeks of asking, my dad finally agreed to write his own post. Here are his words and his pictures.
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I just set up a dark blue backdrop to try to get some better pictures.

I have three new carvings to show today and I'm going to post more pictures of the last carvings, as well. I have been using supposedly hundred year old, huge, spruce telephone poles for my last few carvings. This particular section of pole was full of nails where I imagine many "Lost Dog" signs had been hung. I pulled them from the log before I carved the section into this Angry Bear. After finishing the bear, I put all of the nails back into it. A few even went back into their original places.

The Angry Bear stands 4' 2" tall and 19" wide.

I also carved a Bear holding a "Welcome" sign that stands 44" tall and 16" across.

The Angel Bear is complete with a halo and removable wings. She stands 36" tall and 18" wide, with her puffy cloud.

The Fish Bear is 30" tall and 13" wide.

Dress Up stands 4' 4" tall.

Starry Nights is 4' tall and 21" across. I included a picture of the back that shows the rotted out center. I saved as much of the stable interior as I could. These pictures will hopefully show the trees and turquoise "stars" a little more clearly.

Craig
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It's not part of his post, but it's my blog, so here's a sneak peak at what he's working on! I can't wait to see how it goes!

Accidents happen! Ouch! 

Chainsaw Carving

One of the main reasons we came up with Twin Bridges Nature Park, or whatever it may end up being, is D.Burnett's artwork. He's always been artistic; we have several paintings around the house that he did in his childhood; but he pursued physical work like roofing and tree repair in his younger days, he even called himself the Tree Doctor at one point. I guess it was spending so much time working with trees and stump grinding in the Washington area that inspired him to start chainsaw carving. After living out of state for several years, some things in the house needed to be fixed before you could even live in it, the pipelines had all burst in the cold and several appliances were not working properly, including the water softener. Then we had to investigate some cracking along the walls and that opened the can of worms that is our foundation. After deciding to update and renovate basically the entire house, we realized the whole place is made of wood and bada-bing! We put two and two together, D.Burnett's artistic skill and construction skills, and we came up with the idea for a completely custom home, with beautiful views and green and organic living and every leisure-activity you can think of.

We envision D.Burnett carvings being a part of the house, on the deck, on the cabinetry, on the walls, etc.; but we haven't gotten that far yet. So for now, I wanted to show you some of the work he's done recently. Unfortunately, we don't have pictures of a lot of his older work (They were lost in one of our many computer crashes...), but he's done some really beautiful custom work in a family's yard, and we've got a few brand new pieces he just completed that I would love for you to see.

He also did the antler carving on the wall.

We're calling this "Dress Up". I asked him what his inspiration was for the Native woman and he said, "I just didn't want to carve a dude."

The base of the carving has inlaid turquoise and carved feathers.

 This bear has a hole in the back that we didn't get very great pictures of, but here's a look at the process!

There is turquoise on the bottom of the bear and the base is redwood.

The bear to the right is holding a fish.

There is a paw carved underneath the bust of the bear.

 This mirror was a gift for my mom back in 2005, but it had broken and had been sitting in the dump pile for 8 years. D.Burnett finally fixed it and this is the new design he came up with. The original mirror is on the right.