Since Mike and I came to the web in 1997 I have posted a free, online, step-by-step seminar each year. Many of those seminars are posted right here on our blog at LSIrish.com, and some were posted to other wood carving, wood burning community forums. Before I start posting this year’s free seminar – Cross Crafting Wood Carving, Pyrography, and Scroll Saw Project – I thought you would enjoy a list with links to some of our favorite past projects.
Our newest free, online seminar – starting tomorrow, August 4th, 2016 – takes a fun look at scroll sawing, wood carving, and pyrography and how easy it is to cross-craft these hobbies.
Whittle Tiki Chess Set – Wood Carving This beginner’s wood carving project will guide you through the cutting strokes that create those wonderfully expressive Tiki faces. Includes the free patterns to make your own chess set.
Basics to Painting – Painting your Wood Carving and Wood Burning Have fun exploring the numerous techniques you can use to add coloring to your wood burnings, wood carvings, and scroll saw projects.
Postage Stamp Pyrography – Pyrography and wood burning Have a little fun tonight working through how easy it is to wood burning Celtic interlocking lines and knots.
Relief Canada Goose Carving Seminar – Relief wood carving, pyrography, and painting Explore the basic techniques used in relief wood carving, including working in layers and levels, undercutting, and smoothing the background. Then add fine detailing using your wood burning tool. Finish this step-by-step project by creating realistic coloring using the dry brushing technique.
Whittle Fish Seminar – Wood carving Ice fishing decoys are quick, easy, and extremely fun to carve. All you need is a bench knife, a few pieces of basswood, some scrap leather or copper sheeting, and some imagination. Since these are primitive art, anything goes when carving fish decoys.
Chip Carving Seminar – Chip Carving, wood carving Chip carving is a specialty area in wood carving. With the use of a short-bladed chip carving knife, small triangular cuts create intrigue motifs and designs. Includes a full-sized sampler pattern.
Celtic Dragon Plaque – Relief wood carving This is an entry-level carving project for both relief carving and for working the interlocking patterns of the Celtic Knot
Wood Spirit Carving – Wood carving, cane and walking stick carving Carving a human face into your next walking stick or cane is quite easy when you follow the step-by-step cuts shown in Carving the Planes of the Human Face.
Twistie Snake Carving – Wood carving, cane and walking stick carving Not all of us are blessed to have a backyard wood lot where we can cultivate sassafras trees and honeysuckle vines for twistie stick canes. So in this in-depth tutorial learn how to carve that twisted stick pattern using a bench knife, a few small gouges, and basswood.
Pyrography Doodles – Pyrography and wood burning If you have the burning desire to try your hand at the zen doodle craze or modern tribal tattoo look, you will want to read through this step-by-step wood burning project that uses textures, line designs, and fill patterns to create the finished mushroom design.
Pyrography Steps to Portrait Burning – Wood burning and pyrography Learn how to create realistic shadows and highlights in the human face in your next wood burning project.
Cougar Pyrography Project – Wood burning and pyrography Learn how to create the fine fur in an animal portrait that incorporates realistic shading and shape to the animal’s face.
Ceremonial Mask Pyrography – Pyrography and wood burning This step-by-step project uses lots and lots of photos to guide you through an in-depth design created for first-time wood burners.
Pyrography Leather Burning – Leather burning and leather pyrography Want to try your hand at leather burning? Then this tutorial is just what you are looking for. Includes not only the step-by-step photo instructions but also includes the binding steps for making your own leather artist journal.
Posted on Other Message Boards or Forums
Please note that the following free L S Irish seminars and in-depth projects were posted by me, before we opened LSIrish.com, and are hosted on another forum. I am not responsible for this forum nor a member of this forum at this time.
Please note that you will need to sign-up as a member of this forum to have access to the photos included in each of the tutorials.
If you have questions about these projects please contact me directly, here at LSIrish.com or on my Facebook account, as I can not reply to you on this forum. If you do reply of any of these free tutorial, it will bring these threads to the front of the message board where other members may answer you.
Relief Carving Wood Spirit Grape Man WIP – Over 250 detailed, close-up photos with step-by-step instructions of relief carving the wood spirit, green man face. This thread has had over 69,000 views!
Levels in Relief – Learn how to break you carving pattern into levels for easy carving. This project will teach you how to identify the sky, background, mid-ground, and foreground of any design.
Burning your carvings – Pyrography can be an important technique for your wood carving. So learn how to use your wood burner to clean-up fine wood fibers, add detailing, and even add fine shaping to your next wood carving project.
African Mask Low Relief Carving – The African Mask project focuses on how to establish the levels of a relief wood carving during the rough-out stage of work.
Irish Pyrography Seminar – This in-depth pyrography project shows over 250 detailed, close-up photos, step-by-step instructions, and in-depth explanations of texturing, shadings, and fine line work used to create the Advertising Barn landscape.
Walnut Hollow Versa-Tool – Looking for that first wood burning tool, then take a few moments and read through this tutorial for an in-depth review of the Walnut Hollow Versa-Tool used to wood burn a Toucan Family.
Winter Birdhouse Wood Burning Tutorial – This in-depth, step-by-step project focuses on a winter bird house wood burning scene. The project takes you from the initial tracing of the design to the final coloring steps.
Trapped inside because of the heat? Bored with too much time of your hands? Well, grab your carving tools, leather strop, and some basswood blanks and join me in a little carving fun. If you don’t find something below that interests you, check out our Wood Carving Project page for more ideas and for basic instructions to the craft of wood carving.
Learn the easy and fun technique of chip carving with Lora Irish’s free online seminar. Ten full pages, lots of free patterns, step-by-step instructions.
Ready to carve your first walking stick. This ten page, step-by-step free carving project by Lora Irish will teach you everything you need to create your own Snake and Twistie Stick cane.
This indepth step-by-step free relief carving project by Lora Irish includes how to work a relief wood carving, how to use your pyrogrpahy and wood burning in your carvings, and how to add color to your relief carvings.
Fish decoys are fast, easy, and fun. A few hours, a couple of basic carving tools, and a little imagination is all it takes to complete this free online wood carving project by L. S. Irish.
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Visit Lora Irish’ craft, wood carving, and pyrography pattern and e-projects website. ArtDesignsStudio.com
The link above is a Freebie Pattern Package which you can use to learn how to download, extract, and print our patterns.
Click on the link above.
A Window will pop up titled: Opening Irish-Free-2015-Pattern-Pack.zip. In that window select “Save File”, not “Open With”. In the bottom right hand area of the Window select “Save”.
A new Window will pop up that has the directory to your computer. That window will want to save the file in “Your Downloads”. You can select another area in your computer to save the file. In the left nav area of the window, scroll up and click on “My Desktop”. Chose where In the bottom right of the window select “Save”.
Minimize your browser by clicking the line button in the upper right hand corner of the screen. This will drop the browser window down so that you can check your Desktop to see if the zip file is there. Sometimes the icon for a zip file or downloaded PDF file does not show up on your Desktop even though your computer downloaded the file. If you don’t see your zip file move your cursor into any empty space on your Desktop and right-hand click. This will open a small menu Window. From that menu select “Refresh”. This will reload your Desktop view and your icon should appear. If you still don’t see your zip icon then go check “My Downloads” as it may be there.
Place your cursor on the zip icon and right-hand click. A Window will pop up, select “Extract All”.
A new Window will pop up which allows you to decide where to extract the file, I usually chose to extract it as the file tells me in the location portion of this window. Select “Extract”.
After the package is extracted you should have a new Window that shows the opened file folder. You can click on that folder, open the file and begin printing your patterns. You should also have two files on your Desktop now, one is the original zip file, and the other the extracted, open folder. Save the zip file to “My Downloads” or “My Documents”, you can open this file over and over again. Save the opened folder to whatever folder system you use for your craft projects and patterns.
Note – If you double left-hand click on an un-extracted zip file you will see a folder window and you can see the patterns inside that folder. But since the file has not been extracted you can not print. So, if you can’t print you probably have not extracted the zip.
Email me, Contact Us in the top nav bar, and I will help you through the process!
To “hunker down” – to hide, to shelter in place, to cower from the storm, to huddle under the covers, to roost in a warm spot.
We are dead-center for the worst of Jonas with a possible 36″+ snow fall and blizzard conditions. So we are hunkered down! If you are hunkering down for Jonas you might want something fun to do as you watch the snow fall.
For our pyrographers, check out Grandpa’s Pride, a quick look at how dramatic tonal value contrasts will increase the impact of your burning.
For our 3-D wood carvers, have fun creating your own Tiki Chess Set, a beginner’s level project.
Want to try something new? How about Chip Carving!
I am spending some time this morning working on my Holiday gifts which will include a few leather wrist bands, leather bracelets, and leather crafted hair barrettes. You can purchase pre-made leather items for your pyrography at most large craft stores at very reasonable prices.
Since I already had some leather scraps left over from a half-side hide I cut my own leather shapes. These are pieces of 8 ounce leather that are either irregular shapes or that have some imperfections, and therefore got regretted from another project. But for what I am doing this morning they are just perfect.
Cattle Brand Leather Burned Bracelet Please click on the image for a full-sized photo.
My first sample, the Cattle Brand Bracelet, measures 1 1/2″ wide by 8″ long. Through the middle left side of the scrap there is an obvious tear in the surface of the leather. There are many ways this tear could have happened. In examining the scrap to see if it was ‘save-able’ it appeared to look like a scar made by barbed wire, which is exactly what sparked my idea for how to decorate it.
I used a stylized barbed wire design to accent the scar appearance of the flaw in the leather. In the center of the lower barbed wire design I added my cattle brand and for my main design I used a classic long horn steer icon with stars. My finished burning now makes that scratch in the leather surface into part of the overall design and gives the finished bracelet a real Wild West look.
I finished off this piece by using a mid-sized hole punch along the bottom edge of the leather to create two holes, plus one hole at the outer edge of each side of the bracelet. An 8″ piece of braided leather cord was used to secure my buffalo skull charm and two 12″ pieces were added to the side holes for tying.
To learn more about Cattle Brands, and to snatch a few free Lora S. Irish patterns for branding please visit our blog page about Cattle Brand Layouts. This page also features the Long Horn Steer pattern. If you wish to explore more Wild West ideas, you might enjoy our Western and South West themed pattern packages at ArtDesignsStudio.com.
Lady Bug Hair Barrette Please click on the image for a full-sized photo.
Searching further in my leather scrap bag for my wood burning projects I came across several pieces that were perfect size for hair barrettes. My sample barrette uses a 4 1/2″ x 2″ wide piece of 8 ounce leather, a bamboo kitchen skewer, and an assortment of jewelry making supplies. The arch along the top edge of the barrette was cut by placing a salad plate, evenly centered, over the leather and then cut using my bench knife. The side arches were created using large medicine jar lids.
This particular piece of leather had one very odd, dark-colored spot – just were my ladybug now resides. That spot was not big enough to be a problem in burning the design, but obvious enough I could not ignore it. My solution was simple, any spot in leather can be hidden using acrylic paint or permanent marking pen. So I needed a design that would allow me to color over the spot once the pattern was burned.
My choice was to do a fun Henna Pattern project and add one little, brightly colored Lady Bug to hide that blemish. Once the burning was completed I used black and red permanent pens to color my Bug! She was so fun, and outstanding that I returned to my scrap bag to find more little scraps to add more little Lady Bugs to the beaded decoration of the piece.
Many of us sell our finished projects and a primary outlet are the arts and craft shows in our local area. How you mentally approach those shows can determine whether a show is a success or a flop for you as a business person. For many years I did the craft show circuit and I would like to share my experiences in this posting. Hopefully you will find a few ideas that you can use to make your business grow.
Any business strategy or marketing website will tell you that first and foremost you need to create a Business Plan, but what does that really mean for the art and craft show artisan who does wood carving or pyrography?
Who, What, Where, When, and Why! These are the five basic questions you need to answer for any business planning. Let’s take a few minutes today and look specifically at what a business plan for selling shows might include as we answer a few of those basic questions. I know that you have already gone through these questions with the standard business approach, but let’s look at them again with a little twist in your perspective. Let’s look at the Who, What, and Why from your customer’s point of view.
Who?
Who are you, who are your customers, and who do your customers think you are?
As a free lance artist I have worked in many different crafts over the years. One of my earliest was pin striping and lettering for commercial trucks. I saw myself as a sign crafter, and advertised myself that way on my business cards, letter head, and in my local newspaper. While I did have a small going business I was in direct competition with the larger sign crafting shops in my area. That is until I got a phone call one day from a new client. “Are you that lady that does the tricked-out painting on cars? I have an old pick-up that I want fancied up!”
This gentleman’s phone call woke me up to who my customers thought I was, not who I thought I was. “Are you that lady” told me he was not looking for a business, he wanted one real person for his job. “Tricked- out painting” told me he didn’t want something that everyone else had or that anyone could get through a catalog, he wanted something special made just for him. “Old pick-up truck” told me that he treasured his truck, it was important enough to him to not only keep in excellent condition, but worthy of investing the money for pin striping to make it outstanding. “Fancied up” told me that he wanted bragging rights when he showed off his newly pin striped truck to his family and friends!
His phone call clarified to me how the customers I already had saw me, were talking about me and the work I had done for them. It also gave me the clue as to how to encourage more business by not focusing my sale’s pitch on my own skills as a sign crafter, but on my client’s desire to have their special old truck fancied up and made special.
After that phone call I changed my business cards and advertising from Sign Crafting and Lettering to Have Brush, Will Travel – Trick Out Your Truck Today. Business boomed because I finally was presenting myself to my customers as the person they were looking for to do their job!
Are you an artist, pyrographer, or wood carver or are you that person who will make their desires become real?
What?
What are you selling and what are your customers really buying?
You may think that what you are selling is your pyrography art or your carved caricatures, but that is not what your customers buy. People do not pay $50 for some little 8″ x 12″ piece of scorched wood or $75 for some 40″ tall walnut sapling stick that you cut down in your wood lot. Would you? No! So what are your customers really buying, what do they really want to buy from you that gets them to open their wallet and put money on your hand?
They are buying things that re-enforce their emotions. For many years I worked in the fine arts focusing on pure bred dogs, doing both limited edition prints and commissioned pet portraits. Limited edition prints for the fine artist allows you to invest your time into one work then reproduce that work to create multiple sales. But those prints never became a ‘hot selling’ item – not because the fine art work was not high quality or not artistically rendered, but because people do not want artwork of someone else’s dog on their wall!
They want pictures of their dog, set in the scene of their backyard, or with the toy they gave their pet that shows their love for their dog. Their dog is not an investment or an object they own, their pet is a treasured, important member of their family. Pet owners seldom purchase limited edition art prints as financial investments that may increase in value over time … they buy pretty pictures of their beloved pet. They buy memories that re-enforce their emotion feelings! So while I did not sell out any of my print runs, those prints were promotional items that kept my bookings for original artwork pet portraits filled.
When my husband I ran our dog art website we had an artist submit his limited edition dog art print to us for inclusion on our site. The print featured a particular breed of dog that only had about 500 breeders in the US, with a specific color pattern in a dog breed that had six color variations, seated on a specific brand of motorcycle. With his submission he asked us how many prints we wanted to handle, as he was extremely concerned that his edition was only a 3000 print run. I had the sad task to telling him that while we very much wanted to promote his print we only wanted 3 prints in-house to cover potential sales.
His artwork was spectacular, his skills were superb, the printing and paper was the highest quality, his price range was very reasonable, but the image has four major marketing flaws. To sell that print we needed to find someone that owned that particular breed, in that particular color pattern, that also owned and drove a motorcycle, and a motorcycle that was made by that particular manufacturer … AH! Owners of black Labrador retrievers do not by art featuring yellow labs, and people who drive Harleys don’t put pictures of Yamaha cycles on their walls. We never were able to find the customer that had his specific combination of elements. In contrast one of our best selling dog prints was a small work featuring a non-describe mutt-type puppy chewing on a teddy bear. Why you ask? Because that puppy could have been anyone’s puppy, that teddy bear was a very common pet toy they most likely had purchased for their pup, and it was full of one loving memory moment.
What are your customers really buying at the craft shows?
They are most likely buying items that re-enforces some particular life choice or sparks an emotional feeling. Your customers are not clients that buy pyrography enhanced wooden kitchen spoons – they are nieces looking for a special gift of love for Aunt Minnie who taught them how to bake Christmas cookies. You are not selling a piece of wood, you are selling a special memory that will be shared between the buyer and his or her gift recipient.
The more you can get that ‘niece’ to share her story about making cookies with her aunt, instead of talking about how you use a specific wood burning technique, the more likely you are to land the sale.
As a wood carver I don’t think I ever really sold a ‘cane’, and never pitched a cane as an orthopedic support. If my customer needed that type of cane they bought them from the medical supply house. What I sold was a fancy stick that let a ‘gentlemen strut his stuff and make his next door neighbor just a bit jealous’ as he took his dog for a walk through the neighborhood. I did not present my walking/hiking sticks as part of their hiking equipment, but as a wood spirit or spiritual companion that went with them into the wilderness on their journey.
What is the most important item you ‘sell’ at the craft shows?
Its not some item, its not a tangible finished work, its not that special, extra-hard endeavor that you created … its you and your story!
It had been a long, hot day at our local community yard sale, one of my better selling shows. I was tired, I was ready to go home but I had one more customer waiting to talk with me. So I put on my ‘I am glad you are here’ smile and said “Hi” to the gentleman. Within one minute he was talking about his niece, who was 5 years old, and how his refrigerator was covered with her artwork because he knew one day she would be a great artist – implying that even at 5 she was a better artist than I. OK ?!? For twenty minutes he exclaimed her virtues as a budding Rembrandt, how she could already color inside the lines, and how she loved red. OK ?!? For twenty minutes I listened this man brag about some 5 year old, armed and dangerous, and already a greater artist than I would ever be because he had given her a box of crayolas.
I will honestly admit that his conversation, at first, irritated me just a little bit – maybe more than a little bit – maybe a whole, huge bunch of bits! But after I got home, quieted down, and really thought about what he was telling me I learned one of the most important marketing techniques that I needed to make the sale.
He taught me that every customer buys more than an item, they buy bragging rights. My customer with the 5 year old niece had bought himself bragging rights when he gave her that box of crayons and he was sharing those bragging right with me or anyone else who would listen to him.
Your customers want bragging rights too and they want a story to tell all of their friends about how they discovered this ‘new artist’ or what story you were creating with your burning or carving. Honestly, when you look at any customer through their eyes they really did ‘discover’ you and they are the ones that will carry that word-of-mouth advertising to their family, friends, and co-workers. You want them to have and use their bragging rights!
Your customer wants to talk with their friends about the item they purchased and your story is one way that they can. You can also give them a story about the item they are interested in buying, a story that can become theirs and that they can tell over and over again. After giving my sales pitch about Wood Spirits and how they fit into mythology over and over again at shows I finally wrote it down, printed it, and attached it to all of my walking sticks. Many browsers who came into my booth would stop and read that paper, then buy the stick. They bought two things – a stick and a story to tell.
Each time they tell their story they re-enforce that they are one of your special customers and are more likely to purchase more items from you.
My Experiences on the Whys and Whats
During my craft show years I always displayed several pet scenes, house portraits, and truck or old car scenes, either in wood carving, pyrography, or oils on canvas. But I considered those items as samples to promote commissioned projects, not as direct selling items. I created a photo album that included commissioned works that I had completed for other customers along with the photo of house, pet, and truck portraits – my biggest selling items. That album also had photos of the different styles of walking sticks that I carved and notes about the hiker, where they hiked, and which hiking clubs they held a membership. That photo album was displayed, opened, on the very center front of my selling table where it could catch everyone’s attention. It was my instant advertising that I was willing to do custom work and to get a one-on-one conversation started about what they would want to order if they were making a commissioned order with me.
Also on my table was a full page printed Artist’s Biography that any browser or potential customer could pick up and take home with them. While it did give information about myself as an artist and about my art, it really was a ‘cheat-sheet’ that gave my customers bragging rights information. I even had little pull-off tabs along the bottom edge that included my name, phone number, and art specialty that my customers could give to their friends and family.
If you are like me and have problems ‘bragging’ about yourself ask someone in your family or a close friend to write it for you. You can give them the information details, they will add the impact to those details. Include in the printed bio at least one photo of your best work to show off your specialty, your name, your business name, your website, your Facebook account, and, of course, your phone number.
And, please, remember in writing your bio that Grandma Moses was a farmer’s wife, a self-trained artist, and did not start her art career until she was 78.
Many of my art and craft show did not show a direct monetary return – meaning I did not make many sales of the pieces that I displayed. The chance that I created those specific pyrography burned images that would spark an emotional desire in the browsers of the show was really as low as my finding the customer that fit the dog on the motorcycle print. I might be showing Western scene burns featuring cattle ranching or Rodeo Show riding on the very day that everyone at the craft show happened to be a quilter, a truck driver, or hiking fanatic. Direct sales on larger items can be slim.
I went to craft shows because it put me in a one-on-one connection with potential customers and gave me a chance to engage them in the ‘conversation’ about what they really wanted to buy. I saw my display of finished items more as promotional work to secure commissioned work than direct sales items. And while I often spent more at a craft show than I took in, I always came away with my schedule booked with commissioned projects.
For me, these shows were never about what I could sell, but about how many show browsers that I might be able to turn into new customers!
Hope this gives you some new insight on who you are, who your potential customers are, and how you can turn their desires into sales.
