On one of my trips to the magical wood store (see previous blog posts for details), I found Box Elder wood slices. I had never associated box elders with anything other than the large bugs that like to live in my house and fight for dominance with the Japanese beetles so I was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon these slices and learn that box elder wood often has red streaks or stains within the heartwood of the tree.

When I looked at the wood, I immediately saw a blooming flower so I created a grouping of red and orange blooms with some curly wool that I had on hand.

I wasn’t a big fan of the gray/blue stains on the wood and figured out through MUCH sanding that it went all the way through the slice – grr, so I laid out my wood slices to both emulate the design of my flowers but also so that a majority of the gray stains would be cut out – score! I then sent my wood slices along with this picture down to my hubby and his handy woodshop tools lurking in the basement.

After getting my wood slices back, I had to decide how best to mat the flower painting. I didn’t think a traditional rectangle mat was going to look right so I cut a curved outline out of foam board and then wrapped it in a cream cotton woven fabric.

The hubby did a great job of scribing the wood slices to fit together but there was still a bit of a gap between the slices that I thought I could use to my advantage so I tried a few different colors of wool to see what would look best.

I went with the red (although the blue was really nice too) and started the process of mounting everything within the frame. I added one more piece of matting to the bottom of the flowers for continuity and to give the feeling that the flower stem was breaking through the mat to touch the wood.

This one is currently sitting on an easel in my office and provides a lovely spring backdrop for all of my nerdy conference calls 🙂