A Small Tutorial...

Mother's Day is coming! I need my booth to be prepared! What is something fast and easy for me to make several of? 

Small pallet signs! 

Problem: I don't have any pallet wood right now. Solution: 5 1/2" x 6' cedar fence board. This stuff is rough, so plan on sanding it down and creating lots of sawdust. You can absolutely save time if you use other wood, but in this case it was faster to sand than go shopping. 

I cut the boards to 10 3/4" lengths. Why, you ask? Because I wanted the signs to be square, and 2 boards next to each other measures 10 3/4". (There's that sneaky math creeping up on me again!)

I then cut some wood lath 8" long. I glued and screwed 2 on the backs of the cedar board to hold them together.

Two cedar boards and 2 wood lath gave me enough pieces for 6 pallet signs. I had 2 - 5" lengths of the cedar board left over, so I made them into smaller signs. Waste not, want not!

Here's my stack, all ready to go!

All I had to do now was decide how I wanted them to look. I stained all of them in either Minwax Jacobean, Ebony, or Gray, and added some clear coat spray. Then I found some cute quotes about mothers on Pinterest. I got out my new favorite tool, a white chalk marker (yes, I have a new favorite tool for just about every project I do), and free-handed the quotes. I finished with a last spray of clear coat.

Viola! 

And the smaller signs:

Now my booth will be full and ready for Mother's Day!

A Quandry...

So, I have a bit of a problem. I have been making certain wood creations for a while now, and I think I have been calling them the wrong name. Not unlike when you want the attention of one child and end up saying the names of all their siblings first. "Hey, Brayden, Chase, Faith, I mean Lilly!"

Side story: my father-in-law had 3 boys and struggled with calling them by their names. Just to cover his bases, he would call out, "Ryan, Scott, Kelly, Mary, Ellen, Jane!"

Well, I have been using the wrong name to describe a type of art. The object looks like this:

This is what I have been calling "3D" art. Many times. For several years. Written down. On price tags.

"3D" Tree

It recently occurred to me that it might not be correct!

I really want to name my babies wood creations the right name. If you spend a lot of time creating something, it deserves the right name. I didn't spend 9 (8, really) months creating my first born child only to look at him and say, "I shall call him Dexter." Nope. He was definitely a "Brayden!"

So, I Googled it, and ya' know what? It's hard to google the word for something when you don't know what word to google! What is the correct name? I don't know. I searched and asked Hubby what he thought. Here are some of their ideas:

A relief is a sculptural technique where the sculpted elements remain attached to a solid background of the same material. (source)

"Relief" Home Sweet Home?

A shadow is a dark area where light from a light source is blocked by an opaque object. (source)

"Shadow" Home Sweet Home?

Intaglio, in sculpture, engraving or incised figure in stone or other hard material such that all lines appear below the surface; it is thus the opposite of relief sculpture and is sometimes called “hollow relief.” (source)

"Intaglio" Love at Home?

None of these sound like the right fit. How 'bout the definition for "3D" art?

Three-dimensional definition, having, or seeming to have, the dimension of depth as well as width and height. (source) 

Huh. Maybe "3D" does work. What do you think?

"3D" Love at Home