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Today’s Tips and Tricks is below!!!!
Bullet paper covered wood ornaments for Pyrography
Our artist and author, Lora S Irish, has written 49 books during her crafting, wood carving, and wood burning career, dedicated to teaching you the basics to our favorite hobbies. They make great stocking stuffers! Available at Amazon.com.
Dec. 09, 2024 Tips and Tricks
Simple, quick, and just plain fun … These Christmas tree ornaments are worked on pre-cut wooden ornament shape that measure 70-80 mm/2 7/8 to 3 1/4″ round.
Supplies:
3″ wooden ornament pre-cut, finished shapes
Cream colored, gird, bullet journal paper – A5 or A6 size
DIY Paste Glue
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup whole milk
2 Tble. white vinegar
1/4 – 1/2 tsp. baking soda
Coffee filters
Small, lidded container
Retractable craft knife
Wood burning unit with a ball- , loop-, or writing tip pen
#2 pencil or All graphite drawing pencil
White artist eraser or Eraser dry cleaning bag
Matt acrylic spray sealer or Fixit spray reworkable sealer
Assorted coloring media
Colored pencils
Gel pens
Watercolor paints
So I know you are wondering why go through this long … long … long … glue paper to wood process when you are a pyrographer and the pre-cut ornament is made of wood?
If we were working on basswood, birch, or poplar pre-cut wood ornaments I would not recommend gluing heavy-weight bullet journal paper to your ornament. These three wood species have tight grain that can be sanded smooth. They are the primary three woods used for advanced pyrography work. But most pre-cut wood shapes are made out of a porous, wide grained wood, Paulownia, that has been laminated to create a thin plywood which does not allow you to completely erase your pencil lines, burn with any consistency, or accept coloring in an even coating.
The left ornament is a bullet paper glued ornament. The burned lines are fairly even in coloring, thickness, and depth. The paper is a paler color tone that the raw wood ornaments which gives you bright white coloring and a wide tonal value range. The center ornament was worked on the raw wood. It shows how the open, porous grain of this wood causes skipped areas in your burned line, heavy dark dots and uneven coloring of the lines. The right hand ornament also shows that the pencil outline has created a small dent in the wood, which hows even though the pencil lines have been erased.
Plus … the dot grid paper makes creating your own design or adding lettering to your ornament so easy!
Let’s get started:
Preparation:
1. Do not sand or buff your wooden ornaments.
A slightly rough surface will give your DIY paste glue more area on which to adhere. If you want even more ‘grab’ to your glue, lightly sand the ornament with 220-grit sandpaper. Work any sanding strokes with the direction of the grain to create tiny channels that will fill with your paste. Dust well.
2. Make your DIY paste glue.
DIY paste glue has a very low moisture content, because you control how much water/whey liquid is left in the curd mix. Whey is the liquid remaining after milk has been curdled and strained. Curds is the soft, white substance, milk fat, formed when milk sours, used as the basis for cheese and what will become the paste glue.
For the strongest bond using any glue, you want some of the glue to soak into the top surface of the media you are gluing. But when the glue has a high water content the paper soaks up that water and will expand and buckle. Those buckles in the paper will remain after the glue dries. By mixing your own paste glue, you can remove almost all of the water content, avoiding that expansion and buckling problem.
Mix together one-half cup of warm water and one-half cup of whole milk. Mix. Microwave for 30 seconds to bring the mix to room temperature. Add 2 tablespoons of white vinegar. This will curdle the milk, causing the milk to separate into the watery liquid called whey and small pieces of the milk fat, called curds. Mix. Put a coffee filter into a flour sifter or strainer. Pour the glue milk into the filter, allow the liquid to drain well. Scrape the remaining curd mix into a small refrigerator container that has a lid. Add 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda to the mix. Stir well. The baking soda neutralizes any remaining vinegar acid. A few very small clumps may remain but are easily brushed out when you apply the glue. Store in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.
3. Apply one even coat of DIY paste glue to the surface of your wood ornament. I did not glue the ‘hanger cap’ area of my ornaments, as I planned to paint this area with gold marking pen.
4. Lay the glue-covered ornament face down onto the grid, bullet paper, aligning the center of the wood ornament to the gird dots. Turn face up and press well, working from the center out, to remove any air pockets.
Bullet journal paper comes in lined, blank, and gird prints. Both the lined and grid versions are printed on both sides of the paper. The off-white, cream, and kraft brown colored papers tend to be a heavier weight of paper than standard writing or printer paper. That extra paper weight means you have more paper fibers to absorb the small amount of moisture left in your DIY paste glue mix. This helps greatly to avoid any expansion in the paper during the gluing process.
5. Place your paper-glued ornament, face up on the table. Lay one to two heavy books on top of the ornament to add a little, extra weight during the drying process. Allow the ornaments to dry overnight.
Notice!!!! I did not cut the excess paper from the ornament before I allowed the glue to dry. Again, the paper has soaked up the moisture from the DIY paste glue. This softens the fibers. If you try to cut before that moisture is gone and the paper fibers have re-stiffened, your paper is more likely to pull away from the ornament than be cut cleanly, leaving tiny areas of empty, paperless space on the finished ornament.
All glues – wood, acrylic, paste – need pressure to make the best contact between two surfaces. For this project I stacked several ornament and then used a 2 1/2″ thick dictionary that I keep in the studio just for this purpose.
6. Use a retractable craft knife. Remove the current cutting edge so your are working with a fresh point. Lay the ornament upside down on a cutting mat. Lay the knife edge against the wood ornament and use the ornament’s edge as your cutting guide to free the excess paper. Save the grid paper scraps! You will use them when you begin burning the pattern outlines. Use can use a finger nail file to smooth the paper edges.
Save your bullet paper scraps for the wood burning steps.
A retractable craft knife has several advantages for projects like this. You can adjust how long the cutting blade is. The shorter the blade the more accurate you cut will be when you have an guide edge or lip as the wood ornaments give you. You can remove the current point, using flat-nosed pliers, so that you have a new, sharp cutting point. This is especially important whenever you are cutting paper.
Because you have allowed the glued paper to dry overnight, you will get a clean cut with no pulling on wet fibers.
Creating the design!
7. Using a pencil, lightly mark your pattern, using the gird dots as your guide.
There are some wonderful line art ideas that you can find on both Google, and Pinterest. Search under Mandala patterns, line separators, and henna designs. Please visit my pattern website, ArtDesignsStudio.com for original pattern line art for your next craft project.
8. Set your wood burning unit to a medium to medium high temperature setting. Test your temperature setting, and your pen tip selection by burning a few lines or test designs on the cut scraps of gird bullet paper.
I chose to wood burn my outlines because this sets the design permanently into the paper. I can erase, work coloring, and seal the design without loosing that burned pattern. Wood burning on paper also creates a tiny trough or lowered area where the line is burn. This makes coloring easier a it becomes a gutter that naturally stops the spread of water color and acrylics.
9. Wood burn the design outline.
At this point in the project you can work you design as a stand-alone wood burning. Add shadows, tonal values, and detailing by changing your pen tip or you can work just the outline and use other coloring media to add bright detailing.
10. Using a white artist eraser, remove any pencil marks. Dust the ornament well to remove any eraser dust.
Colored erasers – like the pink eraser on the end of your #2 pencil – are color dyed. That color can leave a streak on your project that can not be removed. Inexpensive pencil erasers are also more coarse in texture than a white artist eraser and can cause damage to the area you are working on both wood and paper surfaces. An eraser pad, a cloth bag filled with eraser particles, makes a wonderful cleaning tool. The flexibility of the cloth bag means you can clean any shape or texture easily.
11. You are ready to decorate your ornament design using your favorite coloring media – colored pencils, gel pens, water colors, or craft acrylic paints. Create layers of coloring by using either a light coat of matte spray sealer or reworkable spray sealer between lightly applied coats!
12. Sign and date your ornament on the back with either your wood burning tool or a pencil, so that your work is noted as being an original creation. Give your ornament several light coats of matte spray sealer, both front and back, to complete this project.
Hope you have fun. ~Lora
