This little project started with my dog's absurd intolerance with heat. She would lay in any body of water to keep cool. From the tiniest puddle on a sidewalk to any and every ocean, lake, river, stream and babbling brook she ran into. Summer, winter, spring or fall, didn't matter to her. She jumped into any body of water out there. When we went on hikes in Summit County I needed something to do besides stare at her lying in the freezing cold water. So I looked down. And I saw thousands of rocks in the stream beds. And I started to pick up the rocks that I thought were an interesting color or texture or shape. Before long my dog was waiting on me. That is until she learned to nudge her soaking wet cold head under my arm as I was crouched down collecting. Nothing makes you jump up faster than ice cold water soaked into dog hair.
As the collection of rocks grew, I was looking for a project to use them on. That's when a friend gave me an old, warped, oak table from a restaurant. I sanded it down, removed 23 pieces of gum from the underneath and planned out my design. Once I was happy with it, I drew it in Illustrator and printed out a giant sticker (shown in the top left corner) on the large format printer and stuck it to the top of the table. Then I routed out the channel and for the next 3 months I worked on my rock puzzle.
Once I had the puzzle laid out I filled the space with a clear resin and waited for it to cure. Came out pretty good and I ended up giving to my Mom. She put it on her living room wall and swears she likes it, and it has nothing to do with me being her son.
skills design / routing & chisel work / a whole lot of sand paper
tools Adobe Illustrator
involvement just me on this one