Saturday, August 11, 2012

August's craft: Pyrography

Pyrography is simply put - wood burning. You can either use a specialist tool like the one in this photo or something similar like a soldering iron.

One of my recent Birthday presents was a book on pyrography and a wood burning pen - very exciting! So after raiding the garage for a spare bit of wood to practice making marks on, my mother in law and I had a go. We spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out which nibs to use first and after a bit of playing we both managed to produce a few different effects.

My first impressions were that it was much trickier than I had anticipated - the projects in my new pyrography book are all so beautifully produced that looking at my own scruffy efforts was a little disheartening. However, after a good nights sleep I decided to get back in and see what I could do second time around. Though I still found the pen hard to use (due to the tip needing to get very hot to use you have to hold the pen much further down - it's not at all like how you would use a normal ink pen) my second attempts were much, much better and I even had a go at a simple leaf design on a basic wood picture frame.

I now have a slightly burnt tea towel (I got impatient for the pen to cool down enough to change nibs and tried using a tea towel to do it while it was still hot - not a very smart idea) but I'm keen to do more and will now be actively looking for wooden things to decorate... hopefully I find some quick as I may have to resort to practicing on our furniture!

4 comments:

MummyCat said...

A great first effort as usual! Burning things looks like fun...

Witchy Lizard said...

Looks lovely babe! Much better than my first efforts-it does take a lot of practice and patience but it is so much fun and a really great creative art :-) Looking forward to seeing what else you make xx

Unknown said...

You've made a great start, Jess, but you would find it so much easier if you tried a rather more advanced pyro machine than the very basic one you're using. I'd be happy to help if you want.

thebigmango said...

My sister-in-law is really good at this. She often gets wooden things to decorate at Ikea.