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 What a pretty girl she is!  This canoe has an attractive shape and nice details with the different types and tonalities of wood. 

She is a unique canoe and has qualities unlike those that I have seen before.  Notice the thin strips of wood running the length of the hull.  Also, her ribs are numerous and spaced very close together.

Figuring out just how to start this boat was a task.  I had a beautiful bottle, but being the rather large size I had to make this canoe to fill the interior, she had to be carved in two pieces.  Above, you can see it roughed out.  The two blocks of wood were first cut and only held together by the vice while it was carved. 
The interior was carefully carved away using a scoop chisel and sanded to produce the nice finished wood in the images to the right.

 

Here she is after about three or four coats of stain to attain the proper hull color.

Ribs were cut strips of watercolor paper that I lightly stained and put a coat of varnish.  I used epifane varnish because the gloss is pretty and it also yellows slightly to give the appearance of the lighter wood ribs.
(Bottom left) The seats have been inserted.  Each having to be cut in half to pass the neck.  Under each seat is a little brace that helps fit the two pieces together once inside the bottle, and at the same time supporting the seats from collapsing.

Though, I did not have to make a rigging for this vessel, I still had the task of directing my attention towards sculpting two small girls who would be rowing the canoe.  They are sculpted out of Sculpey clay (a polymer clay, another brand is Fimo) with a wire interior skeleton.  These proved especially difficult to build and capture any ressemblance of the girls in real life.  Sculpey is easy to shape though its only drawback is the inabilty to work it after it is cooked in the oven.  It is impossible to sand though can be touched up with a blade.

Above, the girls are being fitted to the boat and paddles.
Below, They are recieving their paint to give them life.

No scene of a canoe on Lake Geneva (Lac Leman) would be complete without a couple lake swans.  Having a little fun, I made a butt up swan.

The swans are complete, the girls are painted, and the canoe now has the wooden strips on the side to provide the final distinctive detail of the vessel.  She's now ready for the bottle.
Bottom Left: All the pieces laid out that must be inserted one at a time into the bottle.  Dime for scale (same size as half franc)

Part one going in, the other half resting below.

Part two going in.  The challenge on this one isn't getting it in there, it's putting it back together tightly once it's inside!