Guide to Carving with Tagua Nuts

I'm moving way off the paranormal with this post and moving onto my little hobby of small scale carving with the material Tagua Nut.

I began carving with the Tagua Nut and I know why my tutor at the time introduced us to carving through it, the Tagua Nut I feel is a great material for beginners to learn from.

About the Tagua Nut - The Tagua Nut comes from the Ivory nut palm found in the tropical rainforest's of South America, it has a brown outer layer and also has a little hole that can get in the way of carving, so when designing you should think about how to incorporate it. They vary in size but for the most part are the size of large plums, over time the color of the nut darkens and I've also noticed some shrinkage.

You can probably find the nut at your local woodturner shop for a few bucks each, if not they could probably ship some in, you can also order them online.




Preparation - There really isn't much, sand off the outer brown layer to reveal the ivory colored material and you're ready to go.

Tools - A lot of people use power tools such as Dremels to shape their carvings along with fine sand paper, needle files, vices and grips. I'm a hand tools man myself and use homemade tools for my shaping.



How to make the Tool - The hand tools I use I made myself, they comprise of a hard tool grade steel (Cobalt Super Blank Stock, most probably), epoxy glue and wood for the handle. I've only made these tools once, I made a set and I'm still using the same set, so the process of making them is a little hazy. The one aspect I'm a little hazy on is if I heated the steel to make it harder. I've searched on the net for the tools I made but haven't been able to find an exact match, I maybe giving away someones secret, sure hope not. The closest I could find were Gravers, but they have a straight edge and I haven't used them before, they look like they could give the same result.

Making the tool should be straight forward, get a piece of wood, drill a hole for the steel to fit into, fill it with epoxy glue and force the the steel into it and let it dry. After that you can shape the handle to fit your hand and create the point on the steel that you'll be using to carve.



What you want is two curved edges that come to a point like in the photos provided, use a grind wheel to get the desired shape and then a fine grind stone to get it sharp and smooth.

Carving the Nut - The great thing about the Tagua is it has no real grain to it, so no matter where you go with the nut it wont resist, unlike materials such as wood and bone where you have to take into account the direction of the grain for your designs.

The other thing to take into account is the little hole that each nut has, some cases you can sand it out, but because there's not much of the nut to work with anyhow, incorporating the hole can be a challenge.

With power tools the job can be quick, shape it out, file it and sand it to a final product, you may have to use vices and grips to stabilize the nut. The thing I don't like about using power tools is a lot of the time it comes out looking machine made, but I guess it all depends on how good the user is with the tool. This is why I like using hand tools, you get much more fine controls over the shaping, you get to take your time with the material for best possible results.

So using the hand tool that I described how to make could be a little hard to explain unless shown, but I'll try my best.

There are two main types of positions with this tool, the first is using the point like a chisel, pushing through the material to make a groove, though with the Tagua you may find it can chip is as you go. The second is by using the curved edge to push along the surface of the material, cutting slightly into the material while allowing the tool to follow its own curve, pretty much shaving flakes from the nut, this way you can be less concerned about chipping.

After you're happy with a form you like, all that's left to do is sand paper it to your desired smoothness and you're done, maybe a little polish.

Here's a carving of a Griffin that's about half way done followed by a selection of nuts.



So I hope you liked my little guide on how to carve with Tagua, I'm sure you could take the entire thing as a metaphor for something dirty, LOL I sure hope not. I feel that carving with Tagua Nuts can be a very easy, hastle free experience for beginners and experts alike, it's one great resource.

If you have any question or suggestions (I'm sure I've left something out) please feel free to leave a comment.

Freaky Photos From Scary Creepy Weird

she comes to me at night, originally uploaded by thesickandtwisted.

I thought that since my Flickr group is ticking along nicely without any input on my part that I'd post images submitted to it from time to time. Some great images in there, they're all pretty Scary Creepy Weird.

This image caught my attention by bringing back some of those childhood fears that I had, one was looking into mirrors in the dark, I still hate that one, and two was the fear of things peering around dark corners.

Be sure to check out the rest of thesickandtwisted's photos.

UFOs over the Lunar Eclipse

The image above was inspired by a photo taken that had a strange line of lights just above the moon, the following is a link to the real photo of the lunar eclipse, sent in by your average Joe taking pictures of the event, I didn't notice anything unusual when I was watching the eclipse, but hey half the world could see it at different times.

I find it hard to analyze photos, so I wont with this one, it's a lot easier looking for clues in videos, a picture is worth a thousand words and videos have many.

The photo reminded me of lights on the edge of a huge craft so that's how I went about making the image above.

Dragon Drawing

This is also one of my older drawings, this one was a design for a tattoo for a friend, I never expected him to get this big ass dragon done. I just met up with him one day and he said "hey check this" and he had the dragon on his shoulder.

I have people ask me to do designs for them all the time and I really try to steer clear of doing them, I always feel guilty I never feel that my art is good enough to permanently mark someones skin.

Behemoth Drawing

I drew this maybe 10 years ago, basic pencil on paper drawing, like most. I've always liked drawing giants, behemoths etc, probably why I like Bigfoot so much.

With this drawing of a huge tamed beast, I imagined a world that beasts like this were common, that accounts for the three parking posts. These beasts could crush anyone who rode them, much like Elephants they're still unpredictable, hence the warning signs.

Most of my drawings tie into a pretty much never ending story I'm working on, a lot of the world I imagine is all drawn out I just got to work on a beginning, middle and end. Bout time I focused on that, been literally years, you may not see me around here to much, got a hankering for some drawing.

Oh this is for Wordless Wednesday, though it has a few words and it's still Tuesday in a lot of the world, it's Wednesday here though.

Pareidolia Photos PH Creative

I originally took these photos for my other blog Strange Clips, but that blog is on hold for awhile, so I thought I'd be a good citizen and recycle.

Basically Pareidolia is seeing recognizable images in random things, these are from various places around my house, mostly the toilet floor, good vinyl there, I did another set before these ones which some may have seen.

Boo Post - Fairies, Bigfoot Permits and great sculptures

So here's another Boo Post just a couple days after I said I'd try and do them every couple days, can't believe I'm actually sticking to something, well time will tell.

So... What was paranormal today.

Hunting the elusive fairy video - Looks like The Horror is back in action with the latest post about Gordon T Holmes, the guy who filmed that video at Loch Ness a month or so ago. G.T Holmes has also written a book and CD-Rom package about his experiences with Fairies tittled "FAIRIES ON ILKLEY MOOR", The Horror contacted Holmes to maybe get a hold of this but was told that it maybe available online somewhere, I had a quick search for it myself but couldn't find anywhere to purchase it. Head over to the link above and maybe leave a comment if you know how to get a hold of it.

Got your Bigfoot hunting permit? - Short article about a group of bigfoot researchers hunting for Bigfoot then being asked for a permit by forest rangers, it's probably more to do with the group consisting of several dozen people.

Strolling the Crypto Garden - Lesley has a nice post over at The Debris Field about her visit to Shidoni sculpture garden, looks like a very cool place, she has some photos up of some of the sculptures, the place kind of reminds me of my old art school days, peoples projects big and small all about the place, I miss those days.

So that's what got me interested today, kinda like doing this, hope I don't get distracted, I easily do sometimes.

Zombie Drawing

From time to time I'll be posting some of my illustrations, I posted a lot of these on my first blog, a blog I no longer update.

This is an old Zombie drawing I did for no real reason, just some fun.



I drew it with an HB pencil which is mid range hard and soft and used a hardish kind of paper, with most of my work it is unfinished. This is the only picture of zombies that I've done and I should really get into drawing them more, love the subject. I have had a lot of comments about the lower zombie not quite looking right, but I was going for the "no flesh, only skin feel".

I already have a lot of my drawings, photos and videos up on the sub site to MPL, My Paranormal Media, so if you want to check some more out go there.

I may have posted this here before, not sure, but it does give me something to post about on those slow days.

Shapes in the Clouds

I love looking at the clouds for strange formations, sometimes what I see in them are so vague and I'm sure we all see something different, so I play around with them in photoshop to bring some of the Shapes in the Clouds that I see.

You may have seen the last two before I made posts for WW using them.

Face in a Lamp Post

The Hoff in the Clouds

Peeking over a Cloud

Rhino in the Sky

Skull over a Dark City


I was going to post these to my other blog Strange Clips, as you can tell buy the water marks, but I've decided to make them a WW for this blog. These are what I have made so far and I hope to make many more, as soon as I get some new cloud pictures that is.

My Paranormal Media

Just a quick update, I've added a new sub-blog for MPL called My paranormal Media, it contains most of the videos and images I have made for this blog and I hope it will be easier for people to view the media instead of loading up multiple posts. it will act like a static webpage, no blog posting will go on there and anything I make for pretty much any of my blogs will end up there.

It still needs some work though and I will be adding a lot more to it in the coming weeks, especially with a few of the themed series of posts I'm about to begin posting, that hopefully people will like.

Strange Cloud Formation, what do you see?

Pretty slow on the supernatural front, so I think it's time to show off some more of my photography and photoshop.

This weeks theme at Photo Hunt is fake and I think this image fits it well.

What do you see in this cloud?


This is one of a series that I'm working on for my other blog Strange Clips, all to do with cloud formations and using photoshop to bring the shapes out more. I see strange things sometimes, but I'm running out of photos to play, time to take more photos I think.

Faces from my bathroom floor WW

Here's a couple of images from my bathroom floor that I was talking about in this post. The floor type is vinyl with a random squiggly things on it as the design.

I just look at it some times and get cool ideas for drawings. The first and second photos are pretty clear. but the third is a little harder to make out.

I call this one "Dr Doom".
This one I call "Ghost rider" (hmm seems like a theme).
Well I just call this one spooky.

WW Trapped in a tin can

My first ever blog used to be about my art, my drawings specifically but I ran out of drawings to post because these days most if not all my art is done with a computer.

The drawing above is about being trapped, those little ruts that you get into sometimes in life.

Photo Friday: Fast and WW

This is a little off topic, just trying a few things out. When I first started blogging I used to blog about art and photography and I would participate on these two sites every week, Illustration Friday and Photo Friday, each week they post a topic and you can submit a link to your blog post about it.

The box below I don't quite understand it but I'm giving it a shot.

A day at the beach with a Taniwha sea monster

When I was a youngster me my bother and dad would go on a lot of beach walks along the coast near where I lived, we would always come back with neat stuff, sea junk, bird skeletons, animal skulls... There was always something interesting to be found.

On one of these occasions we started out walking along a beach we hadn't been to before, we all noticed a strange odder in the air, we continued walking and noticed in the distance a large number of sea gulls circling a small area of land right on the sea shore, so we went to check it out.

What we found was a large carcass, about the size of a killer whale, it was shaped like a banana with a fat middle, it had no discerning head, tale or flippers and was fully white. It reminded me of jelly and I remember being able to see its rib cage through its rotting flesh. I think we stayed around it for probably an hour trying to figure out what it was, but we couldn't.
We went on our way, had our day and passed it on the way back, there were two men around it at this time, they seemed to be as puzzled as we were. When we arrived home I asked my dad what he thought it was and he said "Taniwha".

To this day I still don't know what it was, we looked in the local papers to see if there was any mention of a beached whale or anything, but nothing. The conclusion I've accepted is that it was a Taniwha.

Spotted Illustration Friday

Ahhh!!! they've spotted me. Some times they visit me with the night terrors.