I’ve been working on a new style of jewellery over the last few weeks – a bit of experimenting and playing, and a bit of burning my fingers. The technique is called pyrography and its something I’ve liked for a while, but assumed I’d need specialist equipment so never really bothered with it. And then in a sudden moment of genius, I realised I could use a soldering iron, of which there are two in my flat due to the electronics engineer boyfriend.
I’ve done three different designs to start with – a butterfly, a blue tit and a pair of dragonflies, all taken from my Victorian Collector necklaces. They will be for sale at the Craftaganza craft market in Brighton this Saturday, and then I’ll add them to the website shop in the next few weeks.
After treating the little bits of wood, I transferred my design onto it in pencil and then waited for the soldering iron to get REALLY hot. Then I drew with the iron as though it were a pencil, doing thicker outlines and shadows by holding the iron down for longer, and some lighter bits of texture by scribbling lightly. I like the permanence of it, once the wood is burnt, its burnt, you can’t really change it. Same with the burnt fingers though, that hurts a bit. And it feels like quite a natural way to make stuff, burning wood is a very basic human skill. The smell reminds me of the wood workshop at school!
Burning hot soldering iron dangerously close to fingers…
So I then turned these designs into rings, hair clips and earrings. They aren’t for sale on the website yet, but they will be on the Beetle Cherry stall at Craftaganza’s craft market on Saturday so you can come get an early peak at them then! They will be in the online shop in the next few weeks though, so fear not.
