One of my many autumn projects for the blog is a series of roosting houses for our winter birds made from dried craft gourds and decorated with pyrography and colored pencils. Along the way to the creating these kettle gourd houses I wanted to first play around with ideas on making different roof styles. Most DIY birdhouses use the stem area of the gourd for both hanging and as the roof area, but I wanted something different.
So I picked up some smaller dried craft gourds off of Ebay.com – nest egg gourds, small bottle gourds, and some dipper gourds. Next I got out my bench knife, my boxes of craft supplies, my dried flowers and grass, and began experimenting.
I never meant to use these practice pieces here on my blog, but they were so fun to create and have so many possibilities that I just had to share them with you. One of the little delights, shown below, is made with a nest egg gourd, approx. 2 1/2″ high by 1 3/4″ wide, with a corn husk roof, grapevine twist and barberry seed accents.
I was only going to make one or two to figure how the easiest method of adding a roof to a gourd. I ended us with over a dozen in just a couple of day’s play. As I experimented with several different roof material ideas I also came up with a multitude of uses for these small gourd houses.
Some of these miniature gourd birdhouses will become Christmas ornaments, some are made to go out into my garden as bee and bug houses, one became a little garden scene shelf decoration. But my favorite so far is my larger, 4″ x 5″, seed house that will be my sister’s Christmas present. Inside of this gourd, before I added the roof, I added 3 Red Oak trees, 5 Tulip Poplar trees, 6 White Dogwood trees, 6 Chinese False Dogwood trees, 6 Golden Chain trees, a huge bunch of marigolds, and 12 nest egg gourds – all viable seeds from my Maryland garden to her new Colorado home! (Shhh! – Please don’t tell her!!! It’s a surprise!!!)
So join me this week as I share the steps with you for making your own DIY Bee-Bug-Seed Houses for your Christmas tree and autumn gardens. Then at the beginning of October we will start the pyrography roosting gourd houses with a free Lora S. Irish pattern.
Let your friends on FaceBook, Twitter, and Pintrest know so they can share the fun.
Stamp collecting is one of the top hobbies worldwide. As philatelists, we delight in little bits of art work that come from far away places, and that tell about a tiny bit of history, geography, social changes, or feature someone that has effected their country. The vast majority of the stamps that we collect cost less than a US quarter, yet bring hours and hours of fun as we track down complete year sets, special revenue issues, or even discover cancelled stamped envelopes from distant cities.
It is estimated that to have a complete worldwide collection you would have over 500,000 different stamps, from so many countries that Wikipedia has their own WikiProject just for collectors. Many of us focus on several favorite countries, or perhaps a topic or theme that is important to us.
Where you might specialize in butterflies, steam engine trains, or famous women in history, I personally search for stamps that feature maps, geology, and space endeavors. On one of my stamp collecting forums, Stamp Community Forum, one member noted that he collected stamps that feature men with mustaches.
Treasure Trove of Ideas
As wood carvers, pyrographers, and craft artists stamp collecting is a treasure trove of ideas, designs, and pattern work. Over the next few days I will be working on a pyrography pointillism project that features two Celtic birds, entwined in a Celtic knot pattern, inside of a traditional stamp frame.
Pointillism is the process of creating a design using only small dots. Small, widely spaced dots will create our pale tonal values; medium-sized dots, loosely packed give us the mid-tone values; and large, tightly packed dots will make our dark tonal value range.
Art Styles of Pyrography
To learn more about the different styles and patterns that can be used in your pyrography work please check out Lora Irish’s Art Style of Pyrography – 190 pages, 15 projects, Ready for Download, which we have placed on sale for those following our blog and this free project.
This is a quick, easy, beginner’s level free pyrography project that can quickly be personalized to include your name, a date, or a location. By the time we are done this project you will discover how you can create your own postage stamp designs by mix and matching topic patterns with stamp frames.
Supplies needed:
12″ x 12″- 1/4″ sheet of birch, poplar, or basswood plywood Wood burning unit – either one temperature or variable 220-grit sandpaper #2 to #4 soft pencil Painter’s tape or masking tape Red ball-point ink pen for tracing Loop tipped burning pen Ball tipped burning pen Ruler
So, while you get your supplies together, I am off to get our newest e-Project completed, which will, of course, focus on stamp collecting designs and ideas. See ya’ tomorrow with the free pattern to this project. – Lora
Click on the link above for your free download pattern pack.
Have you had that burning desire to create your own quilting batik wax stamps? Have you been looking for wallpaper border stencils? Do you need something special for this 4th of July scrapbook photos?
Well, we have what you want — and its absolutely free!
Our LSIrish July 4th Freebie Pattern Package includes 4 small quilt square motifs, 4 large quilt square motifs, and 3 star border motifs. Plus you will find fabric idea samples and a simple Nine Patch quilt layout for your personal use.
Hope you have fun with this one! And, please, email me through our contact page, above, with photos of what you have created.
Introducing Two New Free Online Series of Free Carving, Pyrography, and Craft Projects ….. Great Book of Free Carving Projects & Patterns by Lora S. Irish Great Book of Free Pyrography Projects & Patterns by Lora S. Irish …..
PLEASE BOOKMARK THIS PAGE – ADD US TO YOUR FAVORITES!
Stop by often at our carving, pyrography, and craft pattern site, ArtDesignsStudio.com to see what Great New Books you can have for free for Carving Patterns, Pyrography Projects, and Craft Designs by Lora Irish!
Great Book of Free Carving Projects and Patterns by Lora S. Irish Online Series
The first release in my new, free online series is an in-depth tutorial on how to carve the wood spirit face using the planes of the human face as our guidelines. Join me as we work through the detailed steps and 199 photographs to learn how easy the Wood Spirit is to carve.
So, Gang, pull up your chair to your computer screen seat at my class table, and let’s have some FREE FREE FREE wood carving, and pyrography fun.
Lora S. Irish, June 01, 2015
Copyright, Lora S. Irish, 1997 – 2015 Art Designs Studio.com, 1997 – 2015 All International Rights Reserved Use of any information, images, or text in digital or printed format or in any magazine, book, or booklet is strictly prohibited without the written, hardcopy permission of the author, Lora Irish.
This is new work, created after May 2013, by Lora S. Irish. Use in part or whole by any publishing company is strictly prohibited without a written, signed, and dated contract for this new work with the author. June 01, 2015
Over the last two days we have been exploring how light, shadows, color, and tonal value are created in a photograph and how they affect the sepia pyrography wood burning. Today we will look at repeated tonal values, black and white contrast, and adjacent mid-tone in our gray-scale photos. Next we will take a look at how your eye and brain sees and interrupts images.
A shade of tonal value will be repeated several times throughout any image or photograph. In the tomato drawing three areas that been marked that all share the same tonal value. Each of these areas would receive the same pyrography burning to keep the tones equal.
You will find similar or equal tonal values throughout your gray or sepia toned image even though those same areas show different hues in the color photo. A medium green, medium red, and medium blue may share the same medium sepia tonal value.
Black and White Contrast
Placing one or two areas of the extreme tonal values next to each other gives the eye a place to compare the darkest and palest tones. The brightest highlight on this tomato lies in the upper left and is adjacent to the blackest tone of the drawing, found in the background area. These two tonal value areas set the whitest and darkest tones of your tonal value scale.
Working an area of high contrast – white against black – creates a visual boundary for your tonal value scale. All mid-tones must fall between these two extremes. The boundary tones do not need to be pure white or pure black; a gray-scale can be created starting with a pale gray and ending with a dark gray.
Adjacent Mid-Tone Values
In any gray scaled photo you will discover adjacent areas in two different elements that have the same tonal value. In these areas the defining line between the two elements seems to disappear. In our sample there are three areas where the body of the tomato and either the table surface or background share the same tonal value.
When two areas share one tonal value you can adjust one or both of the mid-tone values in a burning to create some contrast. Even a very small change in one area, either going a bit lighter or darker, is enough to redefine your boundary lines.
How the Brain Interrupts an Image
Notice that I did not say how the eye sees an image. The eye receives information about an image or photo in two distinct manners, it is only when those two pieces of information are combined by the brain do we see an image. So where the eye gathers information it is the brain that interrupts that information into one image.
Inside of the eye are two receptors – the cones and rods. The cones of the eye gather information about color, it determines if an objects is red, yellow, or blue. The rods, the second eye receptor, evaluates the amount of light each area is receiving; the rods create the gray-scale tonal values that we use in pyrography. Our sample photo for this section is a wooden hill just after sunrise.
Color Receptors – Cones
The sample photo has been altered to remove as much shading as possible while emphasizing the color hue of each area. The gray-green leaves of the forest are now broken into areas of yellow, yellow-green, deep green, and blue. The tree trunks show greens, reds, and yellows.
You can see the colors contained in light when you view a rainbow created through a prism, called a spectrum. Each color in the spectrum has its own specific wave length. When light strikes an object most of those color waves are absorbed by the object. Those that are not absorbed bounce off the object to be received by our eye.
So the color of any object and therefore the color that our eye cones receive are the light wave lengths that the object rejects. We don’t see green leaves, we see the green light waves that have bounced off of the leaves.
Sepia or Gray Scale Receptors – Rods
What the tonal value receptors, the rods, see is equivalent to a sepia or black and white photo. Rods record the amount of light an area is receiving – whether it is in pure highlight or the darkest shadows.
Combining the Cones and Rods Images
The brain combines the information sent by the cones and rods to create one image that has color hues and tonal values.
In the photo sample, left, the color image has been superimposed over the sepia tonal value image, exactly as the brain compiles the information it receives. The resulting photo is an excellent copy of the original camera photograph.
