hi ya Wendy!! maybe Brandi will stop in!!
Hi Ladyfur,
Pyrography is done by burning an image into a surface, wood, is most common, but leather and paper make great surfaces too. there are different burners on the market, the cheapest, but not by any means ineffective is the standard one temp burner like the one made by Walnut Hollow that you find at most craft stores.
one up from that one is the one by dremel, which gets hotter.
the one temp burners have interchangeable tips, that can be screwed on and off for different efects, such as shading fine lines etc.
after that are temp gauged burners. you can turn a fixed temp into a temp controlled burner by adding a dimmer switch from home depot.. I did this before I bought my variable temp pen and it worked great.
the variable temp burners usually get much hotter, and either come withdifferent pens with fixed tips, or interchangeable tips.
I use the fixed tip, cos I'm really hard on pens. The burner I have holds two pens with a toggle switch to go back and forth to change more, I just pull off one and insert another.
for big pieces I use a propane torch for background,
I know pyrographers that use just a magnifying glass and a hot day... (I'm not that patient!!)
Then it's just a matter of drawing out your design, and burning it in, I like to work from dark to light, going back over to darken as I go. here is a piece on leather I am working on. the background is still just pencilled in, and the border has yet to be worked on, it did't all fit in my scanner LOL the wings are pointellism, I used three tips so far, a shading tip, a sharp blade tip called a skew, and a writing tip for the pointellism. I'm not sure if I'm going to add color or not yet, I usually don't decide until the end...
sorry to be so long winded.....
Hope that answered a few questions, you really should try it, it's not expensive, and it's a blast!!
Must use Buy It Now and PayPal.
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