Materials
Wood.
Our favourite woods to carve are pear, plum, and walnut. We source our wood from literally wherever we can: we reuse wood from old projects, people give us wood they don't need or even want to get rid of...often we collect it from trees trimmed or cut down around town, since we work in landscaping, where opportunities never cease for collecting a steady supply of reclaimed urban hardwoods. We have amassed quite a stack of pear, crabapple, and plum wood from the gardens we work in. This "rescued" wood is often green, which makes it easier to carve but more likely to warp and crack. We love it none the less as it comes with a unique story that can often be seen in the knots and swirls of the wood. Sometimes we peruse the shelf of leftover bits and pieces at our local lumber yard, where we tend to find woods we aren't able to collect otherwise, like walnut, ambrosia maple, cherry, and whatever else catches our eye. This wood has typically been trimmed from larger pieces of dimensional lumber and is kiln dried and ready to go.
Oil.
All of our products are polished with heat treated walnut oil, which protects the wood and gives it a shiny, smooth finish. Sometimes we also add a good rub of beeswax.