Bamboo Ghosts

I am a fan of working with reclaimed wood.  Old tabletops, boards from a century-old dilapidated barn, discarded pallets, cedar leftovers from a playset, you name it.  I like the challenge of dealing with the imperfections in the material and, often, the reward is an unexpected beauty shining through that would be difficult to duplicate with new stock.

Also, the reclaimed stuff is usually free, so there's that, of course...

I had been holding onto a retired bamboo cutting board for a while and I wasn't too sure what to do with it. Since I have run out of cipher disks and little fish I figured a new batch of geocache swag was in order.  I wanted whatever I was going to make be small and simple, though, since I have a number of irons in the fire right now.

The splits in the board determined the dimensions of the final pieces, really.  I needed to cut fifteen to save ten.  After rounding an edge on the belt sander the idea to make little ghosts came to mind.  Some finishing work on the bandsaw, some decoration with the wood burning tool, some stain, some sealant, some googly eyes, and there we go - geoswag shortage averted. 

I have a bit more of this stuff left over so I am thinking the next bamboo group will be little cartouches or something like that with a hieroglyphic message or something burned into them. 

I think the next batch of whatever will make creative use of my kid's crayon maker, though.  We will see.