Face grain segmented bowl

Quite by accident, I tripped on a way to make a segmented bowl that had only face grain showing, without needing to cut angles.  This one was made from some 1/2" oak and padauk strips that I had lying around.  It's meant as a prototype, but I plan to see how far I can push this technique now that I know it works.  So many new things to explore . . . . .

The Flower Cupcake Box

Next up is a cupcake decorated with a wooden flower.  The inspiration for this design were these cupcakes:

The wooden version looks like this:

To make the lid, I used 1/4” thick yellow heart and decorated it with petals cut individually with the grain from 3/16” thick padauk, shaped by sanding.  You could also cut the petals as a segmentation, but you'd lose the grain effect.  For the center, I drilled a hole ½” in diameter in the middle of the petals, and cut a matching plug, which was sanded and covered with fabric paint dots.

Here's the pattern for the flower:

Watching the grain

When you make bowls that use two, or even three sets of rings, be sure to keep the grains in alignment. This is particularly important if there are differences in color from one side of the board to the other. This piece of padauk was used for the second try at a stacked ring box. For the first attempt, I accidentally switched sides on one of the pieces. This resulted in a box that was darker on top on one side, and lighter on top on the other side. It was an interesting effect, but not at all what I had in mind, so I bought some more padauk and did it right this time.