Pyrography A Mistake

Hi All,
I've finished another box so I thought I'd share it with you in this post. But, before we go there I'd like to tell you a little story.

Once upon a time, there was this little boy who grew up in a beautiful little village in England.  He roamed the woods and fields and soon learnt the names of all the magnificent trees and could identify every bird that flew in that enchanted landscape. He was truly at home with nature.

He particularly liked the dragonflies that flitted around the reeds as he spent many an hour fishing beside  a crystal clear stream. He thought these delightful little insects, with their metallic blue wings were great and he adored those dragonflies. However, this was a big mistake. The creatures he thought were dragonflies, were actually damselflies.

He was eighteen years old and fishing a small pool when a real dragonfly buzzed over his head and he nearly s**t himself. It took some time to come to terms with this creature, that was almost as big as a sparrow, and when he got home he looked it up in a book and realised his mistake.

I still have an aversion to dragonflies, but I still have a soft spot for damselflies and that is why I have used them in a couple of my designs.

If and when you start doing your own designs for pyrography, make sure you keep any rough sketches because they can be quickly adapted and used again somewhere else. Here is the original design for the dragon flies which I used on a round plaque.

If you learn to use photoshop you can quickly re-size or move items about in your design which is handy when doing pyrography. It saves me a lot of time re-drawing things that I want to use again.

Below you will find the box with the new damselfly design. I used a spoon tip in my pyrography iron and painted the damselflies with a special watercolour paint that gives the wings a lovely translucent sheen. Because I used a watercolour paint on it, I used spray varnish for the first of the three coats I gave it for protection. Then I gave the insides a nice covering of a deep red felt, just to finish it off.

Before we go I just thought I'd mention mistakes in pyrography. What do you do if you make a mistake with your pyrography iron?

Well, if it's a big mistake there isn't much you can do. I have been lucky enough on occasions to be able to blend the mistake into my work by changing the design or adding another element that wasn't there originally. If that isn't possible all you can do is use the piece of wood for practise.

If I make a small mistake with my pyrography iron, I can sometimes fix it with a craft knife. By using the blade as a scraper rather than a knife, it is possible, if the the burn isn't too big or too deep, to remove it. However, concentration and trying really hard not to make any mistakes is the best way forward with pyrography.

I am currently working on a box for precious memories and I will share that with you next time.