Figure carving is a leap away from the swirly traditional patterns most of us start on, and this project takes that jump deliberately. Yukon wanted a side project that would stretch their tooling skills, having previously completed only a handful of classic floral pieces. The subject picked was the Mocking SpongeBob meme, tooled as a dimensional relief onto a tan leather slider sleeve.
The build itself follows sound fundamentals. The cartoon design was traced and cut with a swivel knife, then sculpted and beveled using hand modeling tools, with a modeling spoon doing much of the shaping work. That spoon was a tool the maker had previously steered clear of, and leaning on it this heavily for a first figure attempt strikes me as a gutsy choice. Extra pieces were cut on a round knife, slots and holes punched, and leather welting glued in to raise a top-opening pocket. Stitching ran on a heavy-duty machine, and edges were hammered flat before being smoothed on an oscillating spindle sander.
The payoff detail is the mechanism: tugging the snapped black webbing strap raises the enclosed card out of the pocket, and that card carries the meme line stamped across three lines in alternating capitals. Plastic cards slotted inside get lifted upward by the ejector strap for easy removal. An antique finish paste wiped over the carving brings the recessed lines forward, and a maker mark sits pressed into the back panel.
There is a candid trade-off here. The welt came out undersized, which shoved the stitch lines well outward and left barely any margin for edging, and the maker admits the construction is not their finest work. The maker also rushed the piece in order to get back to commissioned jobs. Even so, the maker reports having fun and learning a lot.
Project by Yukon. Watch it on their YouTube channel: