Woodburning_Keepsake

Woodburning Keepsake Box

I did this little box mainly because I wanted to see if I could. This was a plain pine cigar-style box from Michael’s which involved woodburning and several different colored woodstains to achieve a faux inlaid effect.

I think I’ve mentioned this before in my Bunny Toy Box project that stain is a tricky thing. If you want to keep it consolidated into one area of a wood piece, you have to use a penknife or other sharp tool to cut the grain, and stop the stain from expanding its turf.

I began by finding a picture I liked-- this one was an early 1900s advertising poster. I copied the picture on in pencil (though if you don’t freehand, you could certainly trace something, use a stencil, etc.). Once the picture had been transferred, I used a woodburning pen and burnt the picture into the wood. While this does help cut the grain, I also went over the lines with a small penknife, to make sure that stain wasn’t going to go just anywhere it pleased. Then I used small paintbrushes to add one stain color at a time. I let the stain dry between colors, so that way the colors would be less tempted to blend into each other.

Topped the whole thing off with a clear spray polyurethane, and I called the project complete. In retrospect, there are some things I would have measured out better-- the precision of the patterned trim, the sphere behind her. But overall the effect seemed to work.