If you've been following along on Breen's blog, you know that my husband loves to play with his wood. So I got very excited the other week when I came across a pristine, unopened wood burning kit at a local thrift store for just one dollar! The kit claims to be age appropriate for children 13 and up. Frankly, the manufacturer may as well have put a magnifying glass in the kit in lieu of the wood burning tool with instructions to sit out in the sun for a few hours in order to make any marks. I thought Breen might get a kick using the kit for a project but I ended up stealing it. The kit came with several pieces of soft, flimsy balsa wood. If I actually wanted to insult my creative genius and use such inferior material, I probably could have burned my design in no time at all. Of course, I chose a strong, hard piece of tree branch to play with. I'm sure Breen was proud of my choice.
I made a simple design on a slice of my wood using a permanent marker.
I turned on the wood burning device, which by the way looks just like a soldering iron from my projects a few weeks back, and started to leave my mark. It took a long time because of the hardness of my wood but it did eventually start to do something.
Most likely I'll pick this slice of wood up from time to time and keep working in to it for the maximum wood burning effect. This project brought back a fond memory of wood working. When I was a teenager, my dad and his brother rented cabins in North Carolina and the families would go for a week to vacation. My dad, my uncle and I used to go hiking in the mountains near the cabin and my uncle was, and still is, an avid wood worker. We all chose big solid branches to bring back and transform in to hiking sticks. One year I sat out on the front porch of our cabin with my uncle and we sat for hours while he taught me the art of whittling. I had a gorgeous walking stick by the end of that trip. Recently my aunt and uncle celebrated 50 years of marriage. He has always wanted me to make him "a Jane original" and send it to him. I'm hoping to find a solid branch, whittle it and burn a nice message in to it. I know it would be a nice addition to his wood collection and I'm sure he would smile just knowing that I remembered that time spent on the front porch of a cabin in North Carolina so long ago.
What did you do this week?
