Here's a new story box (all maple)- "The Little Mermaid." A mermaid swims on the woodburned and painted lid. But it didn't work out so well for the little mermaid in the original pre-Disneyfied story- the prince is a bad bargain who doesn't love her, she's given up her tongue, and her feet always feel like she's walking on knives. So  on the inside of the box she is crying on the beach as the human girl she wanted so much to be, before she dies. And oh, yeah, she then turns into a nice spirit and that's supposed to make everything OK. Right. Jerkoff prince. Fairy tales are some effed up stories. If you've never read Grimms' The Juniper Tree, give it a look. It's just too bleak and awful to make a box of- although the little boy's head rolling in the apples would be fun to woodburn.

And a note on being a Texan: I am not used to being proud of being a Texan when it comes to politics, but today I am proud of my people, and proud of Texas senators like Wendy Davis, who filibustered a godawful anti-choice, anti-woman bill for 13 hours yesterday. With the help of Texans who showed up to do a "people's filibuster" in the Capitol gallery, the bill was killed. Tom and I were there yesterday morning to support Senator Davis, and I feel pretty warm and fuzzy right now about what people can achieve in the face of tremendous odds when their government is riding roughshod over their rights. Thank you, Wendy Davis. And thank you, fellow Texans who stayed up and stayed active when we went to bed.

Our series of "skull flowers" boxes has a new addition: this is reclaimed ipe and woodburned and painted maple, with etched glass. The lid lift is wenge with a copper leaf. It really turned out well, with the design flowing between the wood and glass.  Since each glass panel is back to back with a wood panel, we painted the backs of the wood panels black so the etched design would show up more clearly.  Worked like a charm. We were a bit dubious about the experiment, but it was worth it.  The finish on the wood is about as nice as we've ever done- this is one of our nicest boxes in a while.

A new box in the story box series: Maple top with woodburned angel with 22K goldleafed halo, maple base with woodburned and painted devil, walnut sides with maple key joinery. Up next: a finished "Youth and Age" box, and a few more stories in the works.

We're in the process of putting together a LOT of art fair dates for the fall- almost every weekend from the end of September to the end of November we'll be at a different Texas venue: Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, etc. I'm trying to convince Tom that an RV (a small one) would be great for touring, as well as for fun traveling. He is cranky about the idea.  I'm feeling the Minnie Winnie (that's a small Winnebago for all of you not in the loop).

Here is a new "story" box in the series- an Alice in Wonderland with Alice painting the roses red on top and the Cheshire Cat inside. Top and base are woodburned and painted maple, sides are reclaimed ipe.
Below are some new "story" box tops and bottoms: an "Angel and Devil," with a sweet woodburned angel for the top and an evil-looking devil for inside, a "Rapunzel" with scissors inside, and a "youth and age" theme (I've always loved the Venus painting and wanted to just flat-out copy it, and now I have). I've also been experimenting with gold leaf, which is a difficult medium to work with, but really looks nice for accents. Look for these boxes to be finished soon!

I love carving waves into wood. Here is a new box: I carved the maple top with absolutely no regard for how it would integrate into a box. We have discovered how wonderful magnets are as closures, so the lid is held to the purpleheart legs by small magnets to give it a floating effect. It's for sale now under "constructed boxes." One day Tom will calmly kill me with my own chisels for continuing to carve tops without any plan for how they will work as box lids. Another new carved top (still unfinished) is shown below- also of maple. I was thinking of a manta ray as I carved it.