We enjoyed making the parrot box so much we made this fish box in the same vein, although it's much smaller. The head and tail are painted and lacquered (with lots of iridescent sparkle), and the woodburned hinged doors are cocobolo with copper fins that double as pulls to open the doors.  The side fins are etched and carved glass, and the box hidden behind is cedar on a maple base. It's got magnet closures to hold the doors to the front.

This was a royal pain, but it turned out so nice it's hard not to want to make more. We can't seem to get the knack of diminishing returns on all the time-consuming detail- we could easily run into the tens of work hours on boxes like this- but the price one can charge is limited.

And I like hinged door boxes so much (which annoys Tom since he has to set the hinges) that a few are in the works- a series with related designs inside and out. These woodburned holly doors open to show a woodburned and painted heart on holly behind the ribcage- I epoxied the wood with the heart so it's very glossy.  The box is reclaimed pine. We're still not sure about pulls to open the doors- the ones I like remind Tom of "a frat boy's nipple rings." I didn't know frat boys HAD nipple rings.

And another iteration shows a woodburned tree on maple with a glass snake pull opening to show a woodburned Eve with an apple (also on maple). I gave the apple a touch of red, which turned out well. I sewed the glass snake to the wood with copper wire and it looks terrific. We're thinking a dark exotic wood for the sides of this one.

We have a parrot, who we love, even though she is a screaming jerk some of the time. So we made a parrot box. This is two hidden boxes. The top box is pine and the bottom is sapele, both fronted by a painted and woodburned maple parrot head and tail, and woodburned purpleheart wings. The wings are hinged and held closed by magnets- they open to reveal the top box. The tail is also hinged and raises to reveal the sapele bottom box. This should have been pretty straightforward, but it turned out that there were some tricky engineering issues, especially once Tom decided it HAD to have that second box on the bottom (he was right). And then it turned out that  multiple coats of lacquer were needed. I don't think the picture or video do it justice- the green head and tail are very sparkly, as I added iridescent dust to the paint. We liked this so much we're repeating the experiment with a goldfish box- stay tuned for it in the next few days.

See  video below of it opening. I am VERY impressed with my ability to upload a video.