Lumbering Along

I love the smell of burning wood, especially when it's a controlled type of burn, like as in a pyrography project being carefully branded onto an unsuspecting piece of lumber. Today I finally grabbed the reins from the mister and tried my hand at this craft. I am so totally head-over-heels in love with this process!!! I mean, I have always had a complete appreciation for the beauty of what my husband creates, but WOW such power is derived from that flaming hot wand!

So let me tell you exactly what I did, which is actually phase one of a project I've had on the back burner for ummmmmmm 5 years. Yes, 5 years ago I purchased a little wall shelf at the local Goodwill for about $4 and we did nothing special to it but afix it to the wall in our house and use it as a shelf above our television set. But the longer it was there, the more I realized it always seemed very out of place. So when we moved to a bigger house, this shelf made it as far as a box that sat in the back of my closet. It's come out a few times and been considered for garage sales, but always got tucked back away. Over the course of the last month, I've even penciled in some designs of things I'd like to paint on it and kicked around the idea of some wild decoupage something or other. But none of those did this little shelf any justice. And then today I got one of those wild hairs up my you-know-where and finally did something useful with it.

 I sanded it nice and smooth.

I burned in my awesome design.

Now remember, this is only phase one of this project. I burned the design on the bottom of the actual shelf so I could add some heavy duty hooks and turn this into a rather nice-looking (if I do say so myself) halter/bridle rack for someone's tack room. What was originally the decorative lower portion will now serve as a narrow shelf and may have smaller hooks before the project is complete. Nevertheless, I am thrilled to have finally given this shelf a new purpose!

While we were playing in the wood pile, so to speak, dear hubby also helped by sanding my old milk house window frame, adding the sawtooth hangers and hanging it for me. When we have a few clear, warm days in a row, I'll get it outside to put a finish on it and start adding hardware so this can be a sellable piece, too.

Keep checking back for updates!