2016 according to the Chinese calendar is the year of the fire monkey. Though New Year long gone, its symbol still adorns many homes. In addition, a gift in the form of a cute animal will be an excellent birthday present for those who were born in the year of the monkey. These are those who are 12, 24, 36 years old and so on. Such a gift will be much more pleasant if you make it yourself. A souvenir can be crafted at different techniques: sculpt from dough, plasticine or plastic, sew from felt or fabric, make from paper ... There are a great many options, and today we will talk about such a method as wood carving. We will tell and show you how to cut it yourself funny monkey from a pre-prepared tree quickly and easily with your own hands with a selection of photos and videos!

Wood carving is an ancient form of woodworking art. This craft also has different types: you can cut it in the contour, through, sculptural, flat-shaped or flat-relief technique. To begin with, it is worth considering each of the types in more detail.

How to cut a monkey out of wood with your own hands with a photo

We disassemble the contouring technique of carving a monkey on wood

Contouring technique involves cutting out the outline of a drawing on a tree. In order to cut out a monkey using this technique, you need to draw or print a sketch of the monkey on a piece of paper and transfer it to a wooden blank. To do this, it is advisable to choose a board made of linden or alder - soft woods. You can decorate a cutting board in this way or simply arrange a craft in the form of a picture.

Idea: you don't have to look for a ready-made monkey stencil. You can open a children's book or find a coloring book with a suitable pattern and circle it. You will get a ready-made stencil. Even if you work according to a template, the thing will still turn out to be unique, because each craftsman, putting his hand to the product, brings something of his own, has a special style.

So, when the template is transferred to the workpiece, you need to take a jamb knife and cut grooves in it with a depth of 2-4 millimeters along the contour of the pattern. After that, sand the craft, varnish it. To highlight the pattern, the inner parts of the pattern can be tinted more dark paint or stain.

Here is a finished stencil for wood carving.

We cut out using the slotted or through-thread technique

To do this, you need to take a piece of board 5-10 millimeters thick, and also transfer a sketch of a monkey to it... Further, do not cut out the grooves, but saw off the excess along the contour with a jigsaw or a router. Again, finish the inner parts with a knife or just draw. Paint or varnish the product. Give the recipient or decorate their own home with a carved flat toy.

A vase with a monkey - not only beautiful, but also practical

We work with flat and flat-relief carving

To craft in these techniques, you need to have a little experience and skills in working with the tool.

Flat-faced thread- the drawing is cut out into the background, that is, it is concave. For a start, it is better to practice geometric threading - this is the simplest variety of flat-shaped thread. After that, you can proceed to more complex, curly carving.

Flat relief technique- the background is deepened under the drawing, which looks incredibly beautiful, but you need to master the tool even better than for the previous thread. To do this, you need to master the technique of deepening the background, as well as have a set of knives and other tools for work.

However, if you really want to try this option, then the technology will be as follows: you need to transfer the sketch to a tree, and then gradually cut out the details of the drawing. Then all that remains is to sand and varnish a truly unique product.

In the photo - flat-topped thread technique.

This craft will also look very nice and impressive. But in order to cut it out, you need to be able to work with knives and other tools, and it is also important to be able to imagine a three-dimensional image. Beginners are advised to first sculpt a sketch from plasticine in order to feel the volumes and shapes. After that, you can start carving.

First you need to take a piece of wood bigger size what the toy will be. Then you need to cut off all unnecessary - hew out a rough workpiece. After that, using thinner knives, detail the sculpture. And the last step, as always, is to sand and varnish the product.

The most popular style of carving for monkeys was sculptural carving.

Simple option: whole family primates from individual parts.

A selection of videos on the topic of the article

This funny craft"Monkey" made of wood is an ideal decoration for flower pots, but in the coming new year it can be a wonderful gift. Be sure to see detailed video for making a monkey at the bottom of this page.

To make a monkey you will need:

• twine rope or linen cord approx. 4 mm in diameter,
• wooden stick about 40 cm long and 3 mm in diameter,
• 4 brown wooden beads, approximately 1.5 cm in diameter,
• 2 round wooden washers (7.5 cm in diameter for the body, 7 cm for the head),
• 3 oval wooden washers (two 3 cm for the ears, 5 cm for the mouth),
• some brown hair thread,
• black marker or felt-tip pen,
• pink watercolor pencil,
• brown acrylic paint,
• brush,
• glue gun,
• scissors.

We collect a monkey from a tree:

1. First, we will make the ears: for this we take oval wooden washers with a diameter of 3 cm and paint with brown acrylic paint as shown in the step-by-step photo.
2. Next, take an oval for the mouth (5 cm in diameter), draw a nose with brown acrylic paint and a mouth with a black marker.



3. On a round washer (7 cm in diameter) with brown acrylic paint on top, draw as shown in the photo. Draw the eyes with a black felt-tip pen or marker.
4. Paint the ears inside with a pink watercolor pencil. To make them beautiful solid color, you can rub the painted wood with your finger.



5. Using a glue gun, glue the ears, hair and nose and mouth to the monkey's head.



6. Apply to reverse side the head of the monkey with hot glue and glue a wooden stick to it. In the same way, glue the body - a washer with a diameter of 7.5 cm (see video at the bottom of the page).



7. To make arms and legs, cut the rope about 32 cm each and string wooden beads onto it. Tie knots at the ends of the rope, cut off the excess rope.



8. Using a glue gun, attach the arms and legs to the monkey's body.

Well, our dear needlewomen, are we starting to prepare for the New Year?)) Time, as usual, will fly by unnoticed, but there is still a lot to do! Training New Year's souvenirs with the symbols of the coming year is already a real tradition! For those who are not yet in the know - the Fire Monkey is the symbol of 2016, so this huge article "Cross" will be devoted to creating monkeys with your own hands in a wide variety of needlework techniques!

This time I decided to deviate a little from the usual presentation of the material, namely detailed description the process of making each monkey. I prepared a kind for you Workshop guide posted on the web. Believe me, there are a lot of them !!! But there are already several times fewer good, interesting and high-quality ones. Having gone through literally everything, I personally chose, in my opinion, the most worthy, the best of the best !!! I present them to your attention)

In addition, here you will also find links for the purchase of master classes, as well as ready-made monkeys self made! This information is also very relevant on the eve of the New Year!

So, let's start with simple ones and gradually move on to more complex and interesting master classes on monkeys.

Monkeys made of paper and on paper

Draw postcards with children

Children should definitely be involved in the preparation of New Year's souvenirs - let them do it themselves at least simple crafts with monkeys, for example, postcards. They will surely like the process, because in the course of work they literally have to be transported in paint with their hands and feet)

To make a postcard with a monkey hanging on a vine, a sheet of paper and watercolors are enough. Help your child paint over 4 fingers and a palm with brown paint, and then have him leave a print of his pen on the paper! You can also paint the head and tail of the monkey with paints.

Or you can cut them out of colored paper:

From such simple elements you can add a pretty monkey face)

Option three

If there is no time to sew a monkey with arms and legs) then sew only the head, it is perfect as a keychain.

Option four

Such a monkey can be cut out of thick felt by gluing all the details together. It will be faster, and it will look just as dignified.

Option five

But you can sew such a toy monkey with your own hands if you purchase a pattern from its author (tilda4kids).

Coffee monkeys

Do you already understand where I am heading? Of course, to the fact that in the same way you can make coffee monkeys that will fill the house with a wonderful aroma, and everyone who gets it - with a great mood!

These are the mischievous coffee monkeys you can buy

Monkey pillows

Another good idea is to sew a monkey pillow. There are many options, as they say, choose to your taste. From us - ideas for inspiration!

.

Buy a master class on knitted potholders"Baby monkeys" are offered by Svetlana Zabelina.

Hot stand

A hot stand is also in the form of a monkey's face) Description of knitting.

Gloves

The potholder can be used simply as a decoration of the kitchen or for its intended purpose. It fits like this.

Toys in Amigurumi technique are always in great demand. Therefore, choose a master class, knit, and then give hand-made monkeys to your beloved friends and family.

You can see how this monkey looks "live" in the video from Marusya Prokopenko:

Option six

Button & Company shares a master class on knitting such funny monkeys)

All photos from the article

In our great power, monkeys have always been considered cute, cute animals, so all sorts of toys, crafts and images of funny monkeys are in constant demand. According to eastern calendar 2016 has been declared the year of the fiery monkey, and this has multiplied the interest in the monkey theme. In this article, we want to talk about how a plywood monkey is made with our own hands.

Tools and materials

• The main tool in the manufacture of plywood products is a jigsaw... It all depends on your financial capabilities. The price for the most common starts at about 200 rubles. The thing is pretty reliable, but it is designed for one-time work.

Advice: if you do not take into account the manufacture of plywood toys at a professional level, as a small business, then it is better to immediately buy an electric jigsaw.
Whether this activity will become your hobby is still unknown, but a jigsaw is a necessary thing in the household.

• In addition to the slotted version, there is also artistic cutting on plywood, this is one of the directions of wood carving... So if a relief monkey is planned, then you will also need a set of special incisors. For a start, a V-shaped and semicircular incisor is enough;
• Theoretically, a sheet of plywood up to 5 mm thick can be pierced with a good awl, but the craftsmen do not recommend doing this.... So that the veneer does not crack when piercing, it is better to drill the holes with a thin drill, respectively, you need a drill;

• Both the top veneer layer and the edges after cutting the product will need to be rounded and sanded... For rounding, you can take a set of files, and it is better to grind the plywood with sandpaper No. 40 - No. 160;
• It is not enough just to take the drawings of a monkey from plywood and cut out a product from them, such a monkey will need to be painted brightly... If this is a one-time action in order to please children, then you can get by with inexpensive gouache, but this paint is not durable, it wipes off and fades in the sun. Professionals usually use acrylic paints and varnishes, they are bright, durable, and most importantly environmentally friendly;
• As for the plywood itself, if you plan to do small toy for a baby or a figurine that will stand in the house, then you should take urea-formaldehyde sheets "FK", they are environmentally friendly... For products that will stand in the open air, playground, garden or summer cottage, you need a waterproof material "FSF" or "FB".

Making a plywood monkey

Let's start with the fact that such creativity is conventionally divided into 2 directions. This is making garden figurines with your own hands and assembling small toys for children. Accordingly, the drawings of the plywood monkey, as well as the manufacturing instructions, will differ slightly from each other.

Hand toy monkey

One of the options for such toys is an acrobat figure. The essence of the design lies in the fact that on a wooden frame made in the form of the letter "H", a movable figure is suspended between the two upper slats on two fishing lines. When the two lower planks are squeezed, the line is pulled, and the figure performs acrobatic exercises.

Such plywood monkey drawings, as a rule, contain 5 elements. These are 2 arms, 2 legs and a torso. If you do not have enough talent to draw all these details with your own hands, then such stencils can easily be found on the network or bought in a store, this product is not considered in short supply. The big plus is that the figure itself is small and all the details fit easily on A4 format.

As a rule, plywood with a thickness of 5 - 7 mm is used for manufacturing. Too thin sheet should not be taken, the product will look bad. And figurines made from sheets thicker than 10 mm are too heavy, the fishing line will often fray.

To fix the legs and arms of the figure, you will need to drill through holes. But all parts must be movable, so the holes are made 0.5 mm larger than the axis on which the parts will be attached.

As you can imagine, there will be 2 axes, for the arms and for the legs. It is easiest to use an aluminum wire with a diameter of 3.5 mm for the manufacture of these nodes. Aluminum material is soft, so it will not be difficult to rivet its ends.

When the figure is assembled, and all its parts move freely, it's time to assemble the support frame and hang our acrobat. To assemble the support frame, you can take square or rectangular about 15 mm. The size of the middle bar must be at least 3 - 4 times the figure's thickness. The legs of the figure should be higher than the spacer so as not to cling to it when rotating.

As already mentioned, the figurine will somersault due to the tension of the line. In order to thread the fishing line, 2 symmetrical holes are drilled in the upper part of the planks and in the hands of the monkey. The holes are made vertically at a distance of about 15 mm.

Important: while the fishing line is threaded and slightly pulled, the figure should be in the upper position, that is, upside down in relation to the crossbar.

Thus, when the toy is taken in hand, the figure will drop down under its own weight and the line on the sides of the monkey will cross. But as soon as you press the planks, the line will straighten, and the figure will start tumbling.

Monkeys for the garden

Making garden figures of monkeys for landscape design is also not very difficult. As a rule, such products are made noticeable, so the sheet thickness here starts from 10 mm. Otherwise, the wind can simply break or at least blow off your monkey.

Large figures require the same paper stencils. If you didn’t work out with drawing, and you don’t have a large printer at hand, then you will have to order the drawings of the monkey from plywood separately, since there are now enough offers on the market and the price for such stencils is quite affordable.

You can forget about using a hand jigsaw here right away. Firstly, with such a tool it is unrealistic to cut out a product more than the bend of the holder allows, and secondly, cutting a thick plywood sheet by hand is a hard and thankless task. The best option Is the use of an electric jigsaw.

For the arrangement of the internal cavities, a hole is first made, the diameter of which allows the tool web to be inserted there, after which you cut it out clearly according to the markings.

Important: both when working with a manual jigsaw and when using its electric counterpart, the blade during the cut must go strictly perpendicular to the sheet, otherwise you will break it.

Relief carving along the plane, if such is planned, is performed after the product has been cut. The last step before painting is to round off the edges with files and finish sanding the monkey with emery.

Conclusion