I thought about a cute gift idea for a friend of mine and as I like to give away unique gifts, I thought about making a custom thing. I took a simple cutting board made out of wood and I wanted to put my pyrography skills to work. I decided to personalize this for her and I knew that she would love this.
I started with a simple sketch and slowly worked from there. I must admit that I love the smell of burned wood and I don’t know if it is that toxic as I have read in some articles. Either way, I love to sniff it while I work and it makes the activity so much more enjoyable.
I know that I could have easily wrapped this in minutes by going out and buying an already made thing. But this friend of mine knows how to appreciate craftsmanship and I know that some people love the time you have personally invested in making the gift rather than the pecuniary value of it. I would love to receive something of emotional/spiritual value, something that took hours or days to make rather than being given something already made, bought in 5 minutes. But that is just me. I like to believe that a friend took more than 3 minutes to think of me. Too many people buy expensive gifts to compensate for a lack of quality time with their friend. I don’t want to become one of those people. As one of my love languages is quality time , next to acts of service as being my main one, I think that we need more people to do small handmade stuff for their loved ones. And burning wood can be one of them haha
I loved to do dot work on this piece. As a pointillism artist I can’t contain myself: I have to dotify every piece of object I touch. I was very proud after I finished this and the look in the eyes of my friend was priceless: joy, surprise, happiness. People feel when you truly invested in their gift and this can’t be bought.
I have made a short video for the cutting board because I wanted to practice my filming and editing skills. I am slowly getting better and better.
https://www.facebook.com/zatelier2020/videos/519715695859194/
Have an awesome day and toodle loo!