Earring Box

Not my best work to go with not my best week. A few days before my wife’s birthday we found out she was going to inevitably have a miscarriage.

After some thought about what I could get her for her birthday I in light of that news I went out to the jewelry store and found earrings with white sapphires(my wife’s birthstone) and emeralds(what would have been the baby’s birthstone) and made this box for them.

Before finding all this out, my brother had suggested we give the baby the (ridiculous) name Kimothy, we decided to engrave that on the bottom of the box to make it a bit more lighthearted, at this point we’ve basically dealt with all the emotions that go with this and can make this a bit less depressing. The date is the day we had the induced miscarriage at the hospital.

Overall it’s not my best work. The hinges are slightly misaligned and it doesn’t close all the way. The hinges are also too close to the edge and broke the end grain when I tried to secure them down with screws, so I ended up using superglue to hold them in. The board the earrings clip into was improvised and doesn’t work as well as I’d like it to. Under the circumstances, though, this is the epitome of “it’s the thought that counts” projects, my wife loves the box and earrings and that’s what matters. I’m glad I chose some of the spalted maple I had drying in my shop, she really likes the way it looks. For me it was a good distraction for the weekend while my wife recovered from her procedure.

Finished with a matte osmo polyx and the lettering filled in with a general finished glaze.