Icon Box

If you’ve ever been to an Orthodox church, one of the things you’d notice is that people are kissing all sorts of things all over the church. Its an expression of how important things are to us. And so we kiss the cross, we kiss the priest’s hand, and we kiss the icons of the saints as if that person was standing right there in front of us (because we kiss each other too).

My priest had requisitioned a hand-painted icon of the Resurrection for Pascha (Easter) this year. He’s kind of a purist and ultimately wants to replace all of the printed icons in our church with hand-painted ones. The only problem with this is that a computer printed icon can be wiped down with a wet cloth. A hand-painted icon is a bit more valuable-and fragile. And so, the Icon Box.

Its just a display case. Kind of a shadow box. But when little old ladies with bright red lipstick bend down to kiss the feet of their resurrected Lord, there will be a bit of glass keeping those feet nice and clean.

Built from Mahogany and stained English Chesnut, my favorite color.

If you are interested in purchasing an icon box for yourself or your church, please contact me!

It’s Cribbage on the Inside

My sister-in-law is a HUGE Dr Who fan. I’m a fan too, but I can only aspire to her level of fandom. She’s also the reason my wife and I met, despite living on opposite sides of the world, so she’s played a pretty important part in my life.

Ever since I started woodworking, she’s been hinting that I needed to make her a cribbage board. Her dad taught her to play and I had recently learned to play too. It seemed like one of those projects every woodworker needs to try once in his life. So I tried it out on her.

Behold, the TARDIS Cribbage Board!

I started with a bit of 4×4 I had left over from another project, added popsicle sticks (also from another project), made good use of my drill press and practiced my carving skills. My friend Laura likes to paint, so she painted it for me. Some modge-podged decals finished it off.

The pieces are double headed nails cut down to length. Laura painted them in the color schemes of my sister-in-law’s three favorite doctors.

As it sat on my desk waiting for Christmas, I started to feel bad that I had to give it away (she lives 700 miles away, so I wouldn’t be seeing it for a while). But the look on her face when she opened it was totally worth it. She carried around all day, not wanting it to get out of her sight. And then I beat her in a game of Cribbage.