Wooden Interlocking Hearts…

It was my wife and I’s 5th wedding anniversary recently.  Every year we follow the traditional anniversary gift ideas based on material (1:Paper, 2:Cotton, etc.).  We also switch it up a bit and try to make something out of that material (this habit may change when we get to pearls and rubies!) for each other.  Lucky for me this year’s material was wood.  In addition to a few other non-romantic, but useful, things, I wanted to make something unique, special, and sentimental, after all, what are anniversaries for!

My idea was to re-create one of the first serious gifts that I ever gave my wife; a necklace with two interlocking hearts as a charm.  Making an entire necklace out of wood was a little more than I could handle, so I decided to just carve two wooden interlocking hearts.  To give it a little more meaning for us, I carved these two hearts out of a branch that we had trimmed from a tree in our yard.

I believe that the wood is magnolia and I finished it with simple boiled linseed oil.  It’s got that sort of rough, unfinished look that I was going for, but still feels nice and smooth.  I roughed everything out with a tenon and coping saw, then used a combination drill, dremel, and prayers to split the two apart.  Once they were split apart it was easier to fine tune the shape and finish them up.

This was a tricky project, but I’m really happy with how it turned out.  The hearts have a stretched out shape, which match the shape of the log I was using, but are quite obviously still hearts.

The important thing is that the wife loves them!