Will They Remember Her?!?!?!?

That's it. All done. Jessica has finished her time at preschool and is ready for seven whole weeks with her Mum (she's been counting down to that!). So, as a very last goodbye and thank you she decided she wanted to give gifts to another nine members of staff from Abacus. So, we made nine double-sided wooden tags. As always, it had to be a cat! 

Homemade Gift Tags

I think a personalised, homemade gift tag makes any present just that little bit more special. Jessica wrote the names on a piece of paper. I then scanned and reduced them before embossing and finally burning them into plain wooden stars. 

They looked fab hanging on the gift bags...

Pyrography Decoration

I just love this drawing of Jessica's so much. I'm so looking forward to have it hanging on my tree every year...

Black Kite Creations

I have just launched my new Facebook page Black Kite Creations. I will be turning children's drawings into simple, beautiful decorations for Christmas. I love creating keepsakes from children's drawings. I can shrink or enlarge images to fit the desired decoration so you don't even need to get your child to do a drawing for the purpose. If you have a doodle that you've kept but don't know what to do with it this could be your solution. Grandparents would also adore these personalised gifts this Christmas and you'll love rediscovering the little treasure with your decorations year after year. Go on, visit my page and have a look...

Drawings to Decorations

When I was in Wales in September I asked Kat to do some little sketches for me so that I could make some sample Christmas gifts as I am hoping to offer these personalised decorations for sale this year. After going straight to YouTube to get some inspiration she provided me with this little Santa Claus drawing which I have made into a decoration for her Mum's tree this year. I'm really pleased with it but I particularly love turning young childrens' drawings into keepsakes, which is what I'm hoping to focus on doing this Christmas. Once I've got my samples and wooden blanks ready to go I plan to set up a facebook page and will post details on here. Keep your eyes peeled!

Driftwood Wands

My lovely nephew, Archie, is currently Harry Potter obsessed so Jessica and I gathered up a few driftwood sticks on our holidays in Northumberland with the intention of turning them into wands for his birthday next weekend. I have burned various designs on them and created a little display box for him. Fingers crossed that he'll like them!

Thank You Abacus!

The thank you presents for nursery were a team effort. Jessica drew a lovely flower and wrote "Love Jess", which I traced onto the front and back of four wooden coasters before using pyrography to make the images permanent. Jessica then painted them with a layer of acrylic varnish to finish them off.

For the card she wanted to paint another rainbow cat and this time she had to have a really spectacular tail!

Wedding Pyrography

The weather was beautiful, the ceremony was heart-felt, the personal and handmade touches at the reception were perfect and the couple were radiant. 

I mentioned a while ago that Hobbycraft had been posting some blog posts with some handy tips for pyrography so this seemed the perfect opportunity to attempt to massively improve my skills and make a hand crafted piece for the happy couple.

So, what was the key that Hobbycraft provided? A cunning method of transfering an image (in this case writing) onto the wood before burning. I printed a mirror reversed image onto tracing paper, laid it ink side down onto the wood and then traced out the design leaving an imprint of the ink (along with slight indentation). Using a fine, rounded nib I burnt the outline first before burning the interior of each letter.

That printing on tracing paper tip is a real revelation and I can't wait to do more and more pyrography now. Thank you, Hobbycraft!

I'm back!

It's about time I started sharing my crafting exploits again. I must warn you that there is going to be a shift though. I have little time for my own craft these days but I do plenty of toddler crafts. Jessica is very good at indulging me (as well as making her own requests sometimes) and I do a weekly craft at a local, wonderful, toddler group.

The first craft I want to share was created by transferring Jessica's drawings onto wood and then burning over the image. I really love these and made quite a lot as gifts at Christmas. I do need to improve my pyrography skills but that will come with time and practice. I spotted some lovely ideas on the Hobbycraft blog yesterday that I might well try at some point.

Scilly Crafts

We’ve just returned home from our first family holiday on the Isles of Scilly. It was a wonderful week in a beautiful place. There are examples of craftsmanship and entrepreneurship dotted across the islands with galleries and little stalls with honesty boxes cropping up regularly along roads and footpaths. Unfortunately I only decided to do this blog post late on in the holiday so I can’t share everything we came across but here is a selection from St Marys and Tresco…

The wall of the primary school on Tresco is a very effective mosaic including plenty of shells. The second photograph is of a stall set up just outside the entrance displaying crafts by the children for sale.

Back at the quay there was a shell trail set up. It’s a lovely way to raise money for charity and local organisations. There is a lot of work that has gone into this.

On St Marys, my favourite find was the Carn Friars Farm Shop that featured pyrography gifts, homemade jams and chutneys and the best apple juice I have ever tasted. Delicious!

  

This stall was offering rather older craftmanship…

  

Finally, we stopped off at Kaffeehaus, a German cafe, on our last day for a couple of slices of their legendary apple strudel and we came across these beautiful beaded flowers in vases alongside real flowers. I’ll definitely try to make some of these in the future.

  

Pyrography Artwork

This accomplished piece of pyrography was given to me by a very talented pupil in Year 9. She has begun selling her pieces for charity and each one is a labour of love. I have thoroughly enjoyed our conversations about the craft whilst doing gate duty this term – I don’t actually teach her this year so it was our best chance to chat! She only started pyrography a few months ago and I can only imagine how her skill is going to develop over the next twelve months but I look forward to going back after maternity leave and finding out!

I teach too many Year 13s

I’m hoping that my Year 13s are all busy revising for their S2 exam this Friday and therefore have no time to spot these on my blog before I hand them out on Thursday and Friday. This time around I have had 45 spoons to personalise. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this will be the most I ever have to make in one go but only time will tell.

I am thrilled with my new pyrography set. I used three attachments on various parts of these spoons. It was so much easier to use than my old one and I actually managed to knock them all out pretty quickly considering how many I was making.

Personalised Wooden Bookmarks in House Colours

For all manner of reasons, I’m sorry to say that tomorrow marks the start of study leave for many of this years’ exam classes. So, I’ve stepped it up another notch this year and have made Year 11 personalised wooden bookmarks in their House colours. It was just an excuse to practise some more with my new pyrography set and drill really but I have a feeling that they’ll appreciate the gesture anyway.

New Pyrography Set

As a very early birthday present I’ve had a new pyrography set from Amazon. I have over 40 year 13s to make good luck presents for this year so I need a better tool to help me. This also explains why I’ve had to have it a month before my birthday. I’ve spent the last couple of days playing with the different nibs and branding pieces. The only problem is that I’ve had to be very patient in allowing the tool to cool down every time that I wanted to try a new one. Yawn!

Anyway, here’s the tool and some examples of my playing around…

What a lot of time and effort

With two days left until Year 13 leave Woodford for study leave and exams, I have finally finished all of the girls and cards for my 22. The 9 owls, 13 wooden implements and 22 cards are packed away and all that is left to do is make my baked cheesecake tomorrow night. I was very ambitious this year and I’m relieved it’s all done now.

Finishing touches

I’ve been incredibly busy this evening and it’s all been for my Year 13s. My first job was to finish the good luck cards for my form. Here are the eleven for those in my form that I don’t teach…

Secondly, I made another owl - the first on my new machine. I have decided that I’ll do the last three on my old machine just because I’ll be far quicker on it. I need to learn how to better control my material when using the new one before I tackle things like soft toys. I also made good luck tags that I have stitched onto the owl’s ears.

    

Finally I set about this year’s batch of pyrography. I did thirteen implements in one sitting tonight. Now I’m exhausted and off to bed. Phew!