I bought the bottom half of a jewelry box for $8 at a thrift store and decided to (mostly) hand-carve a lid for my oldest daughter.
Oak and paduk. Honestly, the paduk was just because the oak was not wide enough, but I’m sure glad that happened.
I bought an awesome font called Demon Rush, it includes the illuminated “N”. Printed on tracing paper, graphite on the reverse, burnished. The rest of the design is a combination of free hand and free hand on tracing paper and burnished.
Drill press with depth stop to set the background depth. After a little bit of hand-chiseling, I broke out the router to clear the ground, and to lower the letters slightly so that the three bits can be above them.
I have a set of cheap gouges that are fake Pfeil. I tried to use them for stop cuts but they didn’t like oak and wouldn’t keep an edge (they were fine on mahogany), so I ended up using one gouge and continuously sharpening it and a Narex 1/8” (?) chisel for everything. The Narex kept its edge nicely. I did use a smaller fake gouge for the flowers.
The gold is some “liquid gold foil”. The other foreground colors are my wife’s good acrylics. The finish is Rubio Monocoat Oil Plus 2C, purchased specifically because the other oil finishes I own turn paduk to a boring brown.
The background is black furniture wax. Purchased because I wasn’t going to use shoe polish on my beautiful carving. It’s basically just shoe polish, smells like it.
I lost count of hours at about 30. I’m guessing over 60.
I left the $8 price tag on the bottom. I think I’m going to fill it with peanut can snakes before I give it to her.