Found this too: I took a photo of the finished carving, but gave it away a few years ago now and yeah - this was taken around halfway through the detailing, and though I’d have loved to go deeper in resolution the wood was only cheap shitty pine and softwood is useless for carving detailed shapes into.
You’ll get to a point you’ve got just the way you want to enhance detail, start slicing away at it and just when you’ve invested hours into it, the wood will epicfail and split or break clean off…
To stain the heart I used a 1mL needle to withdraw small amounts of blood at a time, because blood obviously clots - remarkably fast too - so I’d just suck a mL out and paint each ‘flap’ or fold then after several weeks of drying, coated the blood-stained sections with french polish to provide a barrier to prevent air oxidizing the blood too quickly.
I actually have another heart I’ve carved from a block of solid redgum (hard as f$#n stone Redgum is and just as heavy), but all I’ve done is carve-out the basic heart shape.
To carve it further, I need to have someone to have it specifically for.
