This is a sign I had wanted to make for putting on our house. I have done a bit of practice carving of letters/shells/etc to hone my skills, but this is the first where I had an actual project focusing on carving.
You will have to forgive the low light, as taking a picture of a carving can be difficult given the flash/lighting/angling of incident light.
Since this picture, I have painted/filled the letters in black and will just do a simple BLO/shellac/exterior varnish on the sign. The wood is Honduran mahogany (easy for carving, not so easy on the wallet).
Still uncarved in the picture is EST 2007 (my wedding anniversary with the wife). I thought that just saying 'the Grams' was open ended, and I liked the idea of a wedding anniversary reminder. I intentionally put 'the' in lower case to help focus emphasis on the family name, and I intentionally put the 'EST 2007' in upper case because the 'est' in lower case looked unbalanced with full height numbers next to it.
The carving went well, but the most difficult part is always the inside curve on rounded letters. That will just take more practice. I was surprised how fast it went overall. It took maybe 5-8 hours overall from layout/carving and learning. I think I did well on format and letter spacing, but am always open to input/advice.
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