I love both stories!! And appreciate the thoughtfulness behind them.
I too have small amounts of ashes which happen to have a sacred place in my shop of my high school best friend and also my mom. I have tossed around several ideas for unique urns for each and look forward to tackling those project’s someday.
We painted a basketball halfcourt onto our driveway growing up and we used glass beads. My brother “borrowed” them from the city road crew he worked at. Anyone driving down the narrow alley at night knew when they passed the Erickson house!
Not to be spammy with the dice, just think it’s cool I can do this in my office 
Also, photographing shiny things is hard, still plenty to learn in all aspects of this new skill 
For the urns it was a Photoshop, Illustrator and CC Pro.
I used Photoshop to desaturate the original image. Then I used paths layers and pen tool to rough out the black/white inlay design (black being the plug, white being the base). once I had a rough inlay in Photoshop I would take it to Illustrator and create vectors for import to CC Pro. In Illustrator I would use the “trace image” tool for some elements and also hand draw some elements. Then back to Photoshop to make the .BMP height map for the 3D carve. In Photoshop I messed with the levels and brightness/contrast tools along with some other tools to exaggerate different elements to make them POP more.
Original Image:
SVG:
BMP:
The knives were all done in CC Pro.
This is beautiful! I hadn’t thought of making a box out of a solid piece like this!
Great description of the process. I’ll definitely keep it in mind as I develop an image for the CNC. I enjoy working with both Illustrator and Photoshop.
I have fallen so far behind working on my Shapeoko 5 Pro that now it sits and collects dust. Many projects on here have really shown the skills of so many.
There is only one way to fix this. Just do it. Life can be quite busy but doing the things you love can be fit in the cracks of other mandatory duties.
Just Do It!!!
Exactly right. Looking at the projects here can be great motivation to jump back in. They always inspire me!
I have not stopped creating designs. I have been in the process of organizing my shop. It is a great undertaking and seems that every time i clear out an area for organizing, I end up with more stuff piled up instead of organized. When I moved here some 2.5 years ago, I unloaded all of my stuff from my other home into the shop. I am still dealing with getting through things that dont belong in the shop, but I dont have a lot of room in my smaller house. So, i have many things that go to my house, but cant fit. I dont want to toss them all as well and having a yard sale at my house, or shop, is out of the question because of how far out I out and how bad my road is.
So, I must continue to work on going through everything and just letting loose and getting rid of things I dont need anymore. Hate to trash much of it, but I must do what I must do. As for getting back into it, I have to get past my last big crash on the machine and get back to it. Just get back on the horse.
If horse riding has taught me anything, it’s that getting back on a horse is usually a hell of a lot easier than the first time you got on it. So you’ve got that going for you
Completely unrelated, If horse riding taught me a second lesson it’s that horses have unique personalities and some of em are just the worst. Who would have thought a horse could be clever and spiteful…he knows those branches are high enough to clear his head but low enough to hit me square in the face. Clever bastard 
Oh man, I can feel your pain,I’m in the same boat. My wife and I recently finished remodeling and selling a house we had in Illinois. I didn’t realize just how much stuff we had there until we brought it to our home in Oklahoma. Now my 30’ x 40’ is stuffed! With a break in the rain this week and next, that’s the goal, getting everything sorted out. Lots of tough decisions as I want to keep it all but know a lot has to go.
I dont mind getting rid of the dishes for my house. I dont need a bunch of those things that i will more then likely never use, but the stuff I use for projects is the tougher part. I try to think of things in a way as if I have not touched it in a year, then it should go, but that isnt reasonable because there are some projects that I may not get to for that long or longer. Then i go hunting for the material to only find out that i got rid of it and now have to go buy more. Or, I go and buy the material, item, or tool, thinking I had gotten rid of it to only find it later and now have two or more of this and know that I may not even use it all.
Plus, it hasnt helped that I am still working on getting my walls completed in the shop so its better weatherized from the heat and cold, but I need money for that and that isnt as easy done when there isnt a lot of disposable income for that kind of stuff. Not to mention that the framing needed to insulate the walls along with the insulation will cost me $2500, and if I make shelves and cabinets to put things in, which also cost money, along the walls that are not finished, then I will have to remove them again to finish the walls.
Just imagine taking everything you have in your shop and placing it all on the floor and stacking it and then trying to organizing it all this way. No shelves, or cabinets, or anything like that to organize things on or in. Then you get the picture of what I am dealing with. Plus, not to mention that I also travel back to my old state to do work there every so many months, for lengths of time. At that point I have put my life on hold here for that duration of time.
Just a stepping stone and I will get to it all. It just takes time. That is also partly why I am not working on my machine as well. So much to do outside of the shop that working in the shop its as easy, and the heat in there is also hard to deal with. I have fans running, but when the tin walls are baking in the sun, the hear radiates into the shop line an oven and all I am doing is blowing around heated air.
I’m in the same spot with the wood shop and exactly why the 5Pro is in the garage…. In the process of insulating and everything is in the middle of the floor and the opposite side of the shop…Which will all need to be moved to the other side of the shop to insulate the other side… a vicious cycle! Almost all of the stuff is on wheels, one of my better lessons learned carried forward.
I watched a friend of mine go through a fence when the horse went full speed, then stopped right at the fence. He luckily was not hurt bad, but was plenty mad
I bought a new mini lathe from FindBuyTool. I only paid $405.00 with no tax and free shipping. I needed it like a hole in the head but it is here. I had a Nova lathe stand I had bought cheap a few years ago. You have a lot of accessories for a lathe so I made a simple drawer. Because the draw is only 9" deep I had to order some full extension drawer slides from Amazon. Because there are a lot of little accessories and open and closing the draw they band around I decided to cut a little platform for most of them to sit on.
My SO3 has made a lot of useful shop projects. I will put some double sided tape under the little platform so it can be removed later if necessary and that will keep it from moving.
I can always use another hole in the head!! 
Nice drawer organizer, one of the best paybacks is making accessories on tools for other tools.
The number of tools a man owns is only limited by the space he has to put them in.
The advantage of having a hole in my head is it lets some fresh air in. 
Recent tap handles photo dump…
This first one is for a Front Pourch Brewing in north Phoenix. It’s based on the label they use on their cans, but extended to a vertical extreme to make it work for a handle. The trees and base are a solid piece of natural walnut and the bear in the hammock and fronds/sign are their graphics under epoxy resin on maple. In case you were wondering, yes, the bear in the hammock swings and real sand glued on and sealed at the base. Small section of blue epoxy resin (leftover from another project and cutout) to represent the sea in the background.
Below are three I made for Dark Sky Brewing in Flagstaff. They have a ‘paranormal’, space, aliens etc. theme because the Lowel Observatory is nearby and they like creative handles. This time I made two sizes of retro-style rockets, aliens abducting Bigfoot and their Skeleton mascot Tiny on a skateboard. Tiny is posable and removable from the handle, so he will likely end up wearing a bunch of different costumes. The real Tiny is probably 18’ and at their front entrance.
And lastly, I made ska-themed handles of Walt Jabsco and Betty Beat during a lull in activity to entertain myself. Unsurprisingly they have had zero attention in my store for several months so I sent them to Ska Brewing in Durango as a gift - no intention of getting any business in return, just happy they are being used and appreciated.
Sorry for the long post, hope it was at least somewhat entertaining.
