This is Tarrin Lupo from TarrinLupo.com
and I just love these wood burned Mandallas.
I want to see how these Mandalas were made.
I interviewed Kate to find out how these are made from start to finish and what
the process is.
Hi my name is Kate .I make wood burns mandalas in my free time. I have a store on
Etsy and I just wanted to walk you through the process of how I create these wood
burned Mandalas.
First you need to start with a piece of wood.
They're all different types and what I'm showing here is a birch plywood
it's very easy to burn on. There are other shapes and sizes and types of
woods.
You'll find that some are softwoods, some are hardwoods.
The kind with rings the annual rings are kind of harder to burn on because as you
go through each ring
it kind of stops the tool for moving a little bit.
I got a lot of my wood pieces at Michaels you can go to the store. Get it
online.
Also a good selection on Ebay and Amazon.
I'm a lot of them come with stickers take the sticker off before you start
working and don't use Goo be Gone
that'll sink into the wood and ruin your end product.
I'm so just sand with the grain until the sticky stuff comes off. Before
burning a design of course you need to either create or print off a design that
you'd like to burn. Cut it to the right size of your piece of wood and then use
transfer paper which is a carbon-based paper to trace the design onto the wood.
You want to put the dark side of the tracing paper down, and then put the
design that you'll be tracing on top of that.
What's very important is that you secure both the design and the carbon paper
onto the wood with tape.
Fold the tape over and put it on the back so it's easy to get off and you
would be taping both the carbon paper and the design at the same time so that
they don't move around when you're tracing.
Of course you'll need a wood burning tool before you start with burning.
There are a bunch of different types I got this one as a gift about 10 years
ago
it's called a versatile tool I think it cost between 35 and 40 bucks at Michaels.
You can buy any type like this online comes with a bunch of different tips in
this particular model and as I said it's lasted a good ten years of heavy use
you can see the color change their that's how much I've used it and it's
still going strong.
This particular wood burning tool has a fixed temperature of 950 degrees
Fahrenheit.
When your wood-burning you get a constant stream of wood smoke directly
into your face, and when you're doing this all day long.
That can really affect your lungs so I wear a protective respirator mask.
it's very inexpensive online this one is a 3m and it costs about ten to fourteen
dollars online.
As well as a protective respirator
you'll need to protect your eyes from the wood smoke
that's constantly going into your face. Depending on the type of wood you're
using you can hit a piece of SAP or bark with your wood burning tool and these
will become superheated and splatter into your face.
I use a protective goggles that wraps around my eyes a third safety measure to
keep the smoke out of your face is to have a small extraction fan next to your
working surface.
Make sure the fan is blowing up word and not directly onto your working surface
the fan will instantly cool your wood-burning tip. This particular fan
extracts smoke from the front and blows it out the top away from your face. I
wait about five minutes for my wood burning tool to heat up and then I'll
test it on a tester piece of wood.
When it's hot enough smoke will rise from the wood right away, and you'll get
a dark mark. When it's not hot enough you get a lighter mark as shown here
this is also a nice place to test your ideas before you start actual work on
your design. As you're working the tip can become unscrewed before you turn the
unit on
make sure to tightly screw the tip in. After securing the wood-burning tip you
can turn the unit on. Ensure that the cord is not dangling keep it away from
kids and pets that could pull the unit off.
it is a thousand degrees and will burn you. When the wood burning tool is not in
use
always secure it on the stand that it comes with on the wood burning tool
itself think of anything metal as being 950 degrees
do not touch it. The handle stays pretty cool,
so just rest it on the handle. Avoid resting the unit on the metal parts
this will conduct the heat through the stand and burn
whatever is underneath it. With the Mandela designs I start in the center of
the piece and work my way out
bit by bit. There are no do-overs in wood burning.
So take your time be methodical.
One huge and very important tip That I have come across in the last 10 years of doing this.
When your wood burning you always want to toward yourself to get a smooth line
Curved lines are the hardest but any line is pretty hard if you don't know what you are doing. Always pull toward yourself as opposed to pushing or going side to side.
You won't get as good of a clean line that way.
So I will just pull this way and this way, like that.
So when I wood burn I am very methodical about how I do it. It increases your speed of wood burning when you do the same pattern over and over.
For example now I am going to burn this way, and this way.
This way and this way. Then I am going to come back around and do the other side. That, that, that and that.
I find it goes much quicker if you do one repetitious movement over and over because you get better and better at it as you go around.
It depends on the design your doing, I am doing a Mandala obviously repetition is in the Mandala design.
Indian chant music
As you burn the wood,
you will get some wood debris forming on your wood surface just scrape those off
using the flat end of a knife. If you make little teeny mistakes you can
scrape them with the grain of the wood using a little knife like this but they
can't be very deep or it will cause big grooves in the surface of the wood.
Meditation Music
This is done now, the front and the back. From start to finish it took about 8 hours.
That includes getting the piece of wood you are going to burn on. Either creating or finding a design to transfer to the wood. Transferring the design via carbon copy paper.
And Then burning the design, finishing and shading.
Spraying it with clear polyurethane. Finishing the back and putting a hanging loop on the back as well.
The whole thing took about 8 hours.
For a beginner it would probably take double that amount of time. But I have done this a lot so I can do this a little quicker.
If you want to see all Kate's designs to check out her Etsy store.
All you have to do is click this little tab that's in the right upper corner
here or you can check the description below.