Do Not Disturb

Hi all,
After finishing the personalised plaque for The Pennine Way I seem to have got stuck in a bit of a rut. I looked through the wooden blanks that I had in stock and found a small wooden pot that I ordered some time ago. It was one of those things that I added to get the most out of the postage. My order was going to cost me £15 no matter what I bought, so I took it right to the wire by buying this pot.

Anyway, this pot is very small, 37mm in diameter x 27mm tall, so it wasn't suitable for anything big. Eventually, because I was suffering from the personalisation bug, I decided to just put some initials on it. I used my own actually and now keep my spare rubbers in it. Before you start smiling to yourself, the rubbers are for my electric eraser. I have taken a picture of the box to provide a photo for listing on Folksy.com.

My next foray into personalisation was a, "Do Not Disturb" room plaque. I am currently writing my ninth book and sometimes it becomes difficult because of continual interruptions. Wouldn't it be nice to have one of those log cabins down the end of the garden, I bet if I had one of them I could show JK Rowling a thing or too.

I scanned the blank plaque into photoshop to give me the right size and then I added the text. I played about with several fonts before choosing one called, Papyrus. I chose this font because it looked modern, but most of all I chose it because it wasn't formal. That meant that if I made a slight mistake anywhere I could adapt it and nobody would be any the wiser. Doing the same thing with a formal font like Times New Roman would be more difficult.

After sorting out the font sizes and the positioning, I printed off a copy and transferred the design to the plaque and burnt in the letters using the same technique as I described last week. The only thing I would add is that when using a spoon tip to do letters always keep the convex side on the top and move the pyrography iron in a circular motion. With the convex side on top, it is natural for the tip to move in a circular fashion.

It is difficult to explain here but if you do the top of an "O" with your prography iron, do not try to do the bottom of the "O" without turning your work upside down. A lazy Susan is ideal when doing lettering because that makes it easier to follow the natural flow of a spoon tip.

After I'd done the text, I sketched straight onto the plaque, a couple of brushes and a tube of paint and then burnt them in.

The good thing about this, Do Not Disturb sign is that can be adapted to suit anybody who needs a bit of peace and quite.

For my next pyrography project I'm thinking of doing something well out of my comfort zone and I'll share my progress with you soon.