Getting My DIY On With Homemade Burn Gel

For Thanksgiving this year, I joined the charcuterie craze and made my first charcuterie for our evening meal following the big Thanksgiving dinner at lunch. Of course, I had to make my own charcuterie boards and they turned out so well that I had to make one for my women's gift for our Christmas gift exchange. And since we can't all be together at Christmas, we had our gift exchange during our family Thanksgiving vacation so I can share my DIY gift early!

I stumbled upon a video online that showed someone using a 'magic' gel that they painted a design on wood using a stencil then burned it into the wood using a heat gun. It looked like fun and oh-so-cool so, of course, I had to try it. I ended up spending more than $50 to make my $25-gift-exchange-limit gift but that was mostly for the heat gun that I didn't have.

I made my stencils using my Silhouette Cameo 4, placed them on my slab of wood, and painted a thin (emphasis on thin!) layer of burn gel over the openings of the stencil. Then I removed the stencil and using the heat gun, blew hot air over the burn gel until it scorched the wood. Easy Peasy!

I love how the 'k' blends in with the natural knots in the wood on this board!

So, without further ado, here is the 'magic' burn gel recipe:

DIY Wood Burning Gel

1 tablespoon Ammonium Chloride

8 teaspoons Thick It

1/2 cup warm water

2 drops yellow food coloring

Mix the ingredients in a glass jar. It will turn to a gel very quickly. The yellow food coloring is to help show where you have painted the gel. You can store the leftover gel in an airtight jar. 

Tips, Tricks and Other Info:

• I bought my wood slabs at Hobby Lobby. I wanted the hubby to help me cut some dead trees down and make my own live edge wood slabs but that didn't happen so I used the live edge slabs at HL. They are made of basswood and are a soft wood - probably not the best type of wood to make charcuterie boards. 

• I used a stencil vinyl to make my design. I had some difficulty getting the stencil vinyl to stick to the wood to begin with. When I started laying a sheet of paper over the vinyl and rubbing the stencil down using a vinyl scraper tool, I had great contact.

• Apply a very thin layer of the burn gel on the wood to get sharp edges on your design. I put a thicker layer on my first attempt and the gel soaked into the wood and I had blobby edges after I burned the gel. Luckily, all I had to do was sand the wood back down and was ready to start over. 

• Keep your heat gun moving so that you don't scorch the area around the design and darken it. It takes a little while for the gel to heat up and begin to burn, so be patient. The longer you heat the gel, the darker it will get.

• After burning and cooling the wood, I applied a food grade mineral oil all over the board to help seal the wood from food contaminants.

• I bought my supplies on Amazon. (I'm not an affiliate and don't get any revenue from any of the links I'm sharing.) This is what I used:
• Seekone Heat Gun 1800 watt Heavy Duty Hot Air Gun
• Fritz Pro Ammonium Chloride
• Thick It Original
• Cutting Board Food Grade Mineral Oil
• Frisco Craft Stencil Vinyl
• Basswood Country Plank from Hobby Lobby

I used a variety of sizes of boards. On two of them, I bought cabinet drawer handles and attached them to the ends of the board for handles. On the board I gifted, I glued wooden balls for feet to the bottom over the screw holes to hide the screws. I thought it really added some flair to the board. 

Here's a couple of photos of my Thanksgiving charcuterie boards. I finally gave up on making my turkey designed board because my grandsons were hungry and kept stealing food off my board faster than I could put them on, so my turkey needs some help! Lol! But the charcuterie was a big hit and a nice change from the heavy Thanksgiving lunch. 

 

I hope I've shared enough info to answer any questions you may have. I watched several You Tube videos before I started, so you can check them out for additional information. 

Happy Crafting!

~Sharla

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Happy Halloween Pillow

I didn't get this pillow completed in time for Halloween but I'm still super stoked about this finish! And Halloween will be here again before we know it!

I made this pillow from 2 1/2" strip scraps from my Pumpkin Squared quilt that I will be sharing in the near future. I cut the scraps into 2 1/2" squares and pieced them into a 10" x 20" rectangle. I then designed a Happy Halloween SVG for my Silhouette Cameo 4. Using flocked heat-transfer vinyl, I fused the design to the my pieced rectangle. I've never used flocked HTV before, but I absolutely love it in this application. 

I custom quilted my pillow top using a spider and cobwebs around the HTV. After quilting, I added some rick rack, which I love too. 

For the back of the pillow, I used a decorative scalloped zipper for easy access for stuffing my pillow. I love, love, love this detail and will definitely be using more zippers in my pillow backs in the future.

Soon I'll share the quilt that coordinates with this pillow and even share the pattern, so stay tuned!!

Happy Quilting

~Sharla

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Miscellany

Just popping in to update on things in the Thistle Thicket Studio lately. It's been hard to find the my mojo but I have been working on my Moda Block Heads 3 quilt. I finally finished all of the 56 MBH3 blocks and made an additional 8 blocks from MBH2. All 6". What was I thinking!!! I swore after making the Farmer's Wife quilt that I would never make 6" blocks again. But don't they look so cute all laid out on my 'design floor'?

I'm working on the setting blocks for this quilt now. I'm going to use Lella Boutique's Mama's Linoleum setting so I have 120 6" setting blocks to make now. Ugh, more 6" blocks! Luckily these go together fairly quickly. Not sure I will get this finished before the end of the first quarter of the 2021 Finish-A-Long or not as I'm hoping to sneak away and spoil the grandkids later this month.

I updated my dining room table with lucky clovers for St. Patrick's Day. I had purchased wooden and tin hearts from Hobby Lobby and added cute candy heart sayings cut on my Silhouette Cameo 4 for Valentine's Day (see post here), so I was excited to find similar clovers so I had to get them for my table. I repainted the wooden part with a lighter green (which still ended up not being as light as I wanted) and then added the sayings in white vinyl. 

I'm really loving my blue and white themed table but thinking I'll get out my Pfaltzgraff Pistoulet dinnerware to do a spring table scape after St. Pat's Day is over. Can't wait to start playing.

This whole pandemic thing has really got me itching to go antiquing. I haven't gotten to do it much (or any in person anyway) this last year. So it was fun yesterday when I had to go to a neighboring town for a farm errand and made a quick stop at a thrift shop. I picked up this cute tea cup and saucer to add to my collection. 

I have done a little 'antiquing' on Instagram this past year. I have only purchased from one person but she makes it soo easy - too easy because it makes me want to buy all the things! Last week my latest acquisition arrived and he's so stinkin' cute. I collect Santa mugs but have never seen a Santa pitcher until my aunt and I were texting and she showed me hers. Then a couple of weeks ago, my one and only fav IG seller posted a photo of her booth at an antique mall and low and behold, there was a Santa pitcher sitting front and center. I responded that I was interested in it and it was soon on its way to me. Like I said, she makes it way too easy!

So what have you been up to lately? I'd love to hear what you're working on! 

Happy Sewing/Crafting/Antiquing!

~Sharla

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Exploding Valentine Boxes

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, I spent the last couple of days making Valentines for my grandsons. Not just any ol' valentine will do for my grands so I thought I'd try my hand at making exploding Valentine boxes. 

No they don't really explode, rather when the lid is removed the sides of the boxes fall out to reveal another box inside. Removing the next box lid will result in the same 'explosion' revealing yet another box. The third box in my exploding boxes do not 'explode' but rather holds a little gift.

To make an exploding box, you need a set of boxes that graduate in size and will fit inside each other. I found my set of boxes at Hobby Lobby. Next, you cut the sides of the boxes apart at the corners so that the entire box lays flat. I cut the two largest boxes leaving the smallest one in tact.

Next, decorate the outside and inside of each panel of the box. I used scrapbook paper, some printed valentine jokes and emoji laughing faces, candy, and hearts cut on my Silhouette Cameo 4. I used stick glue, hot glue and adhesive foam dots to attach the different items to the boxes.

Place your gift in the smallest box and place the lid on top. The smallest box is then hot glued to the inside center of the medium size box. Holding the sides of the medium box up, place the lid on top and then the medium size box is glued to the inside center of the largest box. Lastly, hold the sides of the largest box together and place the lid on top. 

TA DA! Your exploding box is ready to gift. You can make exploding boxes for any occasion and in any size. Wouldn't it be a fun way to wrap presents at Christmas?!

I found several ideas for these decorative boxes on Pinterest, just search for exploding boxes. You can get really creative if you have the time. Mine are pretty simply decorated but it still took me two whole afternoons to make them.

Can't wait to see the creative exploding boxes ya'll make. Tag me on Instagram if you make one!

Happy Crafting!

~Sharla

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Cheers to 80 Years

Yesterday we celebrated my mom's 80th birthday. Not how we had hoped to celebrate, but we marked the occasion in a low-key Covid-era way. Typically, my mom hosts a quilting retreat for her sisters and me over her birthday weekend. Over the years, the number of days has increased and its always a fun time. Because of Covid, she didn't feel comfortable having her sisters travel and stay with her so just mom and I spent the weekend sewing. We had fun and we both made lots of progress on our 2020 stash buster quilts.

To celebrate her day, I designed an SVG file to cut a vinyl decal to make her a shirt to wear. I made some sketches, and even drew my own wording, that I scanned into Adobe Illustrator and traced. Then I began arranging the motifs into a design. When I was happy with the design, I saved it as an SVG which is the type of file my Silhouette Cameo 4 uses to cut. 

This was the first time I tried to design my own SVG file and was really pleased with how it turned out. It was a little time consuming weeding out the pieces of vinyl from the cut design because of the intricacy, but other than that, it worked great. 

Mom gave me a hard time for making her a shirt advertising her age but when I explained that I was making a 60 one for me (I turn 60 in August) and one for my daughter (she turns 40 in October) for our "40-60-80" trip this summer, she agreed to wear it. LOL!

Have any of you designed your own SVG files? What types of designs have you made? I'd love to hear about them!

Happy Crafting!

~Sharla

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