Petal Heads. What is a petal head you may ask?
A petal Head is a gnome that is wearing a flower cap vs. the typical red pointy cap. I still like the typical gnomes with pointy caps but after carving endless pointy capped gnomes I really had to shake things up a bit and this is what I came up with. I carve these in a variety of flowers but am starting with the flowers I enjoy like coneflowers, black eyed susans and daisies. They are great fun to carve and I enjoy their whimsical looks – yes, the ones where their tongues are hanging out! They make great little stand alone pieces or alternatively, with an eye hook that I include, they make great ornaments as well.

Besides all of the other stuff, that’s what I am working on. Just wish I could carve faster but with razor sharp tools it’s best to take your time..

The carvings are made from kiln dried basswood, in this case American Linden Basswood, and I purchase the blocks from a small family owned operation in Wisconsin.

You can buy pre-made basswood ‘roughouts’ but I choose to simply buy the blocks and pencil in my designs, remove some wood with a larger gouge, pencil in the design again and continue this until I have the basic shape. At this stage I start using detailed ‘V’ gouges and about 12 other types of knives, spoon gouges and V gouges to finish the details. In some cases, the chisels and gouges are as small as possible- down to 1mm- enabling me to get quite exacting details as you see in the eyes. In any case, the carving process is done by hand and I do not use grinding burrs or similar power tools.

Once the carving is carved, signed and dated it then gets lightly sanded and finally painted with artist quality acrylics.  Painting is detailed work and often takes me as much time as the actual carving. The eyes have 6 layers of detail to get them as realistic as possible. Once painted, I antique and finally seal the whole carving for a finish that will last virtually forever.

It’s great to create things that will be around for a while.. take that ipad for example, it’s great but just won’t outlive my Santa carving who never wears out and looks great for generations to come!

-Frank Ebersold

Carving is a slow process so I usually have enough inventory for one show a year where I attend the Driftless Art Fair, a juried art fair that’s a lot of fun to attend. Beyond that, you can find my latest carvings right here so come back often!

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