This one was fun! Maddy’s nursery is sea creature themed and I wanted to do something decorative to parallel the big tree shelf in Savanna’s room.

This was my first project that incorporated AI. I asked Google Gemini to come up with a picture of a whale using wood tones. The first result was completely wacky but after asking for something simpler, I got an output that looked a lot like this end product. Pretty cool.

Unfortunately AI is not good at creating clean vector files so I took the PNG it had created and painstakingly (because I don’t really know what I’m doing) converted each shape to a path in an SVG. I also added the curved lines on the underbelly.

After getting all my blanks ready, I used the Shaper Origin to cut out each component. Everything was 1/2 inch stock, but I planed the lower back fin piece down to 1/4 inch to add a depth dimension. The lower front fin would also stick up 1/4 inch to provide three levels. On the body pieces I also cut pockets for the mouth, eye, and fins. And on the underbelly I used a round nose bit to cut the grooves.

I used dominoes to glue up the three body pieces and the smaller lower fin, then glued the big front fin into the pocket on the underbelly. I added an 1/8 inch roundover and sanded to 220. We decided not to put any finish on this one because we thought the muted natural wood tones fit in well with the rest of the nursery decor.