Personalized Gifts for Him or Her with Woodburning-Pyrography

AJ — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 20:03:11 +0000

Looking for handmade gifts for men? With Father’s Day coming up, I thought you might like a suggestion. Woodburning, also know as pyrography, is a great option for making a personalized gift for him. Woodburned items also make wonderful personalized gifts for women, too!

Personalized Gift for Him or Her with a Woodburned Box

My simple explanation of woodburning is that you are basically drawing on wood with a hot pen. You will need to purchase a woodburning tool for this craft project. My woodburning tool is made by Walnut Hollow, and I am quite satisfied with it. It came with different writing “points” (or tips, as I call them), as well as three ”points” that can be used to simply stamp the wood with the design of that particular tip. It is important to note that the woodburning tool get VERY hot – 950 Farenheit/510 Celsius. So if you were planning on doing this craft with kids, they are going to need to be old enough to handle the tool. I also suggest you keep a glass of ice water next to your work surface (whether you are a kid or not), in case you accidentally burn yourself.

The only other two items you need for this craft project are (1) the wood item you’d like to woodburn (like a wooden box, see picture) and (2) a template of the design you want to burn into the wood. That is what I love about woodburning; I can personalize the design to match the person receiving the gift. The possibilities are endless.

You can use stencils or other templates to trace the design onto the surface of the wood. Once that is done, you simply trace over design with the woodburning tool. It’s that simple. If you are good at drawing, you can try woodburning a freehand design. For most of us though, tracing over a template is the way to ensure the design turns out how we want it to look.

If you want to learn more techniques and tips, there are a number of good woodburning/pyrography books out there. My number one tip is this: get a scrap piece of wood and practice using your woodburning tool to get the feel for it. By doing this, you will really get a feel for how the tool moves across the wood, which is really helpful when you are doing your project.

Happy Crafting,

Rubber Stamps – For More Than Just Paper Crafts

Thu, 25 May 2006 00:41:00 +0000

I love rubber stamps! One of the things I love most about them is that you can use them in so many different types of crafts. So, in addition to all the cool things you can do with them on paper – embossing, layering images, powder pigments, resist ink techniques, and so on – you can incorporate them into other crafts as well.Maybe you never thought rubber stamps were for you…and maybe you spoke to soon.

Here’s a list of some of the other types of crafts you can use rubber stamps with:

Soap Making – Place an unmounted rubber stamp face up in your soap mold to create an indented image of the rubber stamp on the soap. Once the soap has cooled, you simply peel off the stamp. It’s so easy! (FYI – you can easily unmount any wood-mounted rubber stamp. Contact me for details.)
Candle Making / Decorating – Heat the side of a pre-made candle with a heat gun and while the wax is soft, press the rubber stamp into the candle. Once the wax has cooled, you can highlight the image by rubbing ink or paint across the surface of the candle to highlight the image. The ink makes the raised part stand out from the depressed areas created by the rubber stamp.

Woodburning – Rubber stamp the wood and then go over the image with a wood burning tool. It is like having a free woodburing pattern!
Wood – You don’t even need to woodburn the rubber stamped image if you don’t want to…just stamp it with ink and you’re done!
Glass – Use permenant inks to rubber stamp directly onto glass. I customized a wall mirror this way.
Etched Glass - Did you know you can emboss a rubber stamp image on etched glass with embossing powders? It is really cool!

Clay – Whether you are using Polymer Clay, Paper Clay or Air Dry Clay (like DELIGHT Air Dry Clay), you can use your rubber stamps to create some amazing effects and cool projects.

Gourds - You can rubber stamp directly onto a gourd. I’ve even seen embossed rubber stamp images with embossing powder done on gourds. (FYI – it did need to be sealed so the embossing powder didn’t chip off.)
Fabric / Leather – I’ve see some really cool things done with rubber stamps on fabrics and leather. It’s also a fun kids craft. I’ve rubber stamped on t-shirts with kids and it was a big hit!
Metal (like Copper Metal Quilting Sheet) – If you don’t know what a Copper Metal Quilting Sheet is, just think of a sheet of copper rolled out thin like a sheet of heavy cardstock. Super thin, super flexible – you can easily cut through it with scissors. Permenant inks and rubber stamps work great on metal!
Friendly Plastic – Simply heat up your Friendly Plastic and press an inked stamp into it for a cool effect.
Shrink Plastic – You can make so many things with shrink plastic and to be able to rubber stamp on it makes it even better.
Cookies – It’s not a typo! Yes, you can even rubber stamp in food coloring on a nice, flat sugar cookie. (Contact me for details because you want to make sure everything is sanitary.)

Do you see why I LOVE rubber stamps so much?!?! There is so much versatility with stamps. Rubber stamping on paper is great, but I enjoy being able to branch out and try different things whenever inspiration comes. So, whether you didn’t know how versatile those rubber stamps of yours were, or whether you knew but had temporarily forgotten, I hope this inspires you to do something creative.

Happy crafting,

Artfully AJ

PS – I’d love to here what you’ve used rubber stamps on…just comment on this post!

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Personalized Gifts for Him or Her with Woodburning-Pyrography

Rubber Stamps – For More Than Just Paper Crafts