My project for this week was decorating my wooden stool seat that had been water damaged. I had previously drawn the design I wanted on it and started wood burning before it sat neglected on my drafting table which had become a dumping ground rather than a work surface. I knew that it would take a bit of time to finish this project but I have to say that I completely underestimated it. Thankfully I started early in the week on Monday, January 1 instead of my normal procrastination or else I would not have gotten it done or be very happy with the mediocre outcome.
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Starting the wood burning again. |
I have a Burnmaster ‘HAWK – 110V” high power wood burner. My father-in-law generously donated the funds to purchase this equipment for the very small repayment of wood burning a walking stick for him. I do believe I have a few more projects I should do for him. This wood burner has a heat adjuster that controls the temperature of the pen. I have found that when wood burning for long periods of time, the handle of the implement gets very hot and I need to wrap the handle with a towel or some sort of buffer. Someday I will find a silicon glove or hand mitt that I can use while burning which still allows me some dexterity in movement.
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I have a bad habit of leaning really really close to my work. I had a crinked neck for most of the week. |
Wood burning is done by burning the wood with a hot piece of metal. The hotter the metal, the quicker it burns a hole. The density of the wood also affects the quality of the burn. If you leave the pen in place too long, it will just create a hole rather than a line. It takes a bit of practice but becomes fairly easy when you get the hang of it. Burning creates a small amount of smoke and the room always smells like a nice campfire when I’m working. Burning also creates ash which can build up on the pen tip and impede the burning of the wood. A trick I learned when I worked at Dutch Village as one of their artists and wood burned names on various tourist trinkets and wooden shoes (among other art projects) was to wipe the tip on a piece of sand paper. The sand on the paper scrapes off the ash as well as prevents the paper from catching on fire.
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Cleaning off the pen tip. The “freckles” are from when I let the tip rest a touch too long. |
I finished the wood burning in two sessions. My hand gets too hot and stiff to finish it in one go. It took about 4 hours total for the wood burning to be completed. I went slow and tried to make my lines firm and tidy.
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Quitting for the night, after about 3 hours of burning. |
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Whooo Hooo!! Done with step 1 of 3! |
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Next was painting! |
I got out all the colors that I thought I would use and started in an easy place, the sunflowers and daisy. While I know that my flowers are not realistic, I did want them to be believable. Thus I started with the sunflowers for easy decisions.
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It looks like I’m going to paint piglet somewhere on the stool. |
I really enjoyed painting but it took me about 10 hours to complete. Ironically, the first flowers I started were the last ones I finished. I got the petals done no problem but I got stuck on the centers. I decided to wood burn them and paint them rather than just burn the whole middle.
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My workspace is a mess but the stool top is finished! |
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Step 2 of 3 done! Now it just needs to be sealed so off to my dad it goes. |
Part of finishing a project is cleaning up the mess. I spent a half hour or so putting all the paint supplies away, packing up the wood burner from which I had to wipe a layer of dust off and finally tidying my drafting table. I wiped down all the surfaces, reorganized my supplies, and added another plant. Never too many plants in one room of course and it keeps the air clean. Now I can say I have successfully completed week 1! Yay me!
Ok, Now onto week 2’s goal. I have several items that need to be mended or altered. One of them is a skirt that I want to fix for my sister Deb. She gave me the skirt last summer because, although she really liked it, it was too big for her. I am… ahem…. both her big sister and bigger sister and so she gave it to me. It is a cute skirt but I thought I would alter it to fit her and give it back. She lives in Utah and will be visiting Michigan this week so I am going to measure her and get this skirt done and back to her. I know that I will probably have to mail it to her but I am determined to at least get her measurements when I see her this week.
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Cute little Debby skirt and you can see my clean drafting table! |
The other two items both have zipper issues. One of my favorite skirts that is very flattering on me regardless of current weight and a 100% cotton sweater with a hood both need help. The sweater has been in the mending pile for well over a year and the skirt is a much more recent addition of about a month. Zippers are scary. Well, not really but they are a lot of work and I just have to sit down and DO it knowing that I am not great at them and sometimes it doesn’t come out as well as I would like. So this will be a test of if I can get them fixed or if they get flung.
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Zipper has several broken / missing teeth, probably from when I tried to pull it off without having the zipper all the way down. |
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I got this sweater with the zipper in trouble already but now it is hopeless. |
Well, this week the seam ripper comes out, the zipper stash gets raided in hopes of a correct length and color zipper and we shall see if these clothes can be made useful again. If not, well then flung it shall have to be. I do know that I will have to monitor my time well as I have lots of things going on this week including teaching a dance class for the next two weeks at a local high school for winter interim. This will fill my afternoons and with my evenings filled with volleyball games, meetings for events that I coordinate and visiting my family in another town, I will have to get really intentional with my time. Let’s see how bad I want it.
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One last shot… I’m pretty happy with it. |
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