1. Working on it
1.1 The first decisions
Now we have the wood ready to make our wand. We've chosen it carefuly, and depending on the kind of wand, we have the wood cleaned, sanded, turned or shaped in the way we want.
I selected a 17" twig, then barked, cleaned and sanded it, so I got a smooth piece of wood to work with, as you can see in the next images:
One thing we need to decide at this point, is if we want to carve a design on it, or burn it, or just leave the wood plain in order to paint it. There are many ways to do this. But we will use a process that is cheap and safe and if we want to paint the wand, we will do it later.
1.2 About designs
There are many designs out there to carve or burn our wand's handle. I suggest to pick up an easy one if you don't have a lot of practice with this processes. We can use stars, moons, suns, plants, spirals... whatever we like. Or we can find some patterns in a book or online.
Here is an example of a celtic pattern I never used.
Whenever you will carve the design or burn it, you have to draw it with a pencil on the surface of the wood. Try to be careful, but if you make a mistake, you can erase it and redraw it again until the wand has the design exactly as you want.
1.3 Other designs
Another of the best beginning decorations is to wrap the wand's handle. You can use anything from silver or copper wire, to leather cord, to silk ribbon. It's best to wrap tightly at each end and with a loose wind through the middle of the wand or just for the handle. Some of my wands's handles are wrapped with copper wire. You can fix your wrapping, cord, ribbon or wire, with superglue. You may also wish to save some cord if you wish to dangle a few charms from the handle.
In the next example, I used 3 leather strips for the handle and white glue to attach the leather to the wood:
2. Burning or Carving
If you have already drawn the design on the wand, now you can carve or burn it. This can be a dangerous step, so you must ask for help from an adult if you have no practice doing this.
If you are going to burn it, you must have a burning machine. A woodburning device has variable heat control unit . It is easy to use and produces excellent line quality on all types of wood.
Pyrography, known to many as woodburning, uses the heat from a tool or instrument to burn images or designs onto wood, leather or other materials. It has been an art form for as long as there have been men roaming about the earth. It can be documented as far as the cave days when men used the burnt ends of pieces of wood to draw illustrations on the walls of the caves they lived in.
The term pyrography was coined when burning on wood became a popular art form during the Victorian period. In this day and age artists use burning pens to create fine works of art that have become big sellers.
Just like other forms of illustration, woodburning requires patience and vision. What might have been just a piece of scrap wood can be transformed into a work of art. Woodburned crafts are so special because every piece is a hand made original.
Be careful not to burn to deeply into the wood. We just need superficial marks. Here is one of the burning machines you need:
And here is the result. As you can see, burning the wood leaves an interesting dark design:
But if you decided to carve your wand, you need some cutting tools, and maybe a rotary tool. I have to insist in the supervision of an adult in this step, in order of safety. And don't forget to wear goggles!
You can start cutting small lines of your design, not too deep. And slowly make them deeper until they get some kind of natural texture. I'll show you some examples of this:
3. Painting
Well, now the wood is ready, and if you have picked up a nice coloured wood, maybe you won't need to do anything else to it. But maybe you will want to change its colour.
There are simple ways to do this. One is using wood stain or oil to change the tone of the wood if you want it darker or in a different tone. Another is to use acrylic paint. One or the other work fine as you are happy with the finished work.
One of the best effects is if you paint your wand's handle in one colour and the rest of th wand in a different colour.
Or maybe you could want it in a totally different colour. In the next example I used black wood stain in all the wand and just added a ring of aluminum foil to the handle.
But of course, you could want to try acrylic paints. In that case, you can paint all the wand in different colours like a rainbow (mark it in 7 segments and paint them each in these colors of the rainbow from top to bottom: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet), or just little details.
Don't forget to follow the instructions of the products (stains, oil or paints).
for each work with the next info:
