The following wood-burned design was conceived and created as a surprise for my childhood friend, Sophia, who is a fervent lover of honeybees.
To play into the honeybee theme, I figured a hexagonal box would be most suitable. It's representative of a honeycomb's perfect hexagons. If you're ever curious why honeybees chose to pursue this geometric shape/structure for their hives, look no further than here. Hint: it has to do with economizing compactness.
The unprimed wooden box required sanding initially. My designs were drawn on by pencil, and then wood burned using a generic soldering iron. The brand I use is Walnut Hallow. It's not the highest grand quality product, but it gets the job done with some diligence required. (If I still had the wood-working + power tools that were readily available to me when I was 11 years old, it would've been fun to hand-make this box from scratch. Since this wasn't the case, I resorted to Woodlines Work Corp).
The top surface design of the box consists the words: "Sophia B. Monochrome - Honey, Bee Yourself" embedded within a honeybee. Burned into each side panel are hexagonal honeycomb compartments, which also double up as molecular structures for honey components. In this case, this happens to consist (but is not limited to) sucrose, glucose, fructose, gluconic acid, hydrogen peroxide and pyroglutamic acid. For a brief description of the chemistry of honey and why it never spoils, I've included a visual reference from Compound Interest below.
Moving inwards, the bottom interior of the box contains a similar, shortened version of the pun that was seared into the surface. This time, I replaced the word "bee" with a wood-burned illustration of a bee due to space limitations. The rims are lined with gold paint. Meanwhile, the top interior consists of four honeycombs with a small photo-transferred image of Sophia (or Soph, for short) and I using only wax paper. Given this transfer medium and the grainy surface of the wood, the experiment didn't prove that effective.
For those who care about the future of honeybees and wish to possibly mitigate the devastating effects of the honeybee colony collapse, here area few things you can do to support these little hard workers:
- Include nectar-producing plants in your garden so your local honeybees have a food source
- Eliminate or reduce the amount of pesticide usage
- Support companies that support ethical bee research and breeding programs
- Sign a petition from the "Defenders of Wildlife" that urges the EPA to restrict insecticides that harm honeybees
- Stay involved and up to date with the latest honeybee research and protection developments at SaveHoneyBees
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| Source: http://www.compoundchem.com/2014/08/21/chemistryofhoney/ |
SOPH HONEY, BEE YOURSELF
Original wood-burned design on a hexagonal Paulownia hinged, wooden box.
(diameter: 6.25", height and hexagonal side width: 3.125")
Coated with an eco-friendly bio-based varnish (2015)
For a look at my previous wood-burned box, please refer to the following link.
http://greenlinh.blogspot.com/2011/03/artists-for-japan.html. It was specifically created for a2-day charity relief fundraising event called "Artists for Japan." 100% of the proceeds went directly to aiding the victims of the disastrous 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. The benefit was organized and held at KOBO in Higo, one of the best Asian art venues and galleries in Seattle's International District. Special thanks to all of the amazing volunteers, art contributors and generous folks who participated. We ended up raising $94,000! WOOT!
