A custom carving done in a large basswood box which can hold about 1200 sleeved cards.
The box was provided to me and was done specifically to fit the cards.
I was asked to combine two design ideas from my older work and the result is quite satisfying.
Unlike my other card boxes this one is carved on all sides, the word Wizard is carved on the front, the word Cube on both sides and no additional wording is on the back, just the borders:
The box dimension is 10x10 inches with 5 inches in height.
It is finished with a coat of dark mahogany gel stain like most of my chip carved work.
The top lid is fully removable, each row on the bottom of the box is lined with a velvet fabric:
Work in progress:
Fully sketched design on the lid, the sides of the lid and the base. Just the design creation took something between 8-10 hours, it was done on many separate occasions:
I always sketch the designs directly onto the wood, in this particular case it would be better and faster just to retrace the borders on the sides but I don't even have the heat transferring tools (which work with printed designs). It was still relatively fast to re-do the pattern on additional sides once the first one was done as the measurements stayed the same:
The base if fully carved here, time to do the lid:
The depth of the box was too much for the cards so instead of just using the velvet lining on the very bottom I created about 1'' thick inserts for each row. These make the cards easy accessible:
And the lid as the progress goes on:
Completed carving before the gel stain finish...
...and after:
