If you find a fallen tree, you never really know how long it has been lying there. Many of the wood slices I use are from trees that were already down and had been naturally drying outdoors for some time. sometimes you luck out and find a fallen tree with no cracks. That being said, just because you have a nice clean crack-free branch or tree, it does not mean the wood slices won’t crack when you slice them or even after you slice them.
I have been holding onto this large shoebox full of spruce wood slices for about 2.5 years. I love the colouring of the wood and it would have been so nice to burn on them BUT there is a crack in every one.
I used a few to make these reindeer ornaments.
Another bunch I used with a group of kids to make an owl craft.
Those two projects were done when I had just started wood burning. It doesn’t even look like I sanded the wood. I had since sanded the rest of the slices nice and smooth.
One of the people I follow on Instagram (can’t recall who), had mentioned turning a cracked wood slice into a heart. As soon as I saw that post, I knew what I had to do with my box of cracked wood slices.
Unfortunately, I have been without my bandsaw since we moved to Grande Prairie. Even after we moved it to the new house a few weeks ago, my husband had to fix something on the saw before I could use it. It is now fixed. The first thing I cut was a few of these hearts. This is about 1/3 of my cracked slices.
Each one is different depending on where the crack headed.
Each heart is about 2.5”X2.5”.
I think I will stain some, paint some and burn some.
I also would like to drill a hole in them and add some twine with threaded beads or buttons.
Remember those large wood slices I sent through the drum sander a few weeks ago?
Well… they also cracked.
I decided that ”when given lemons, make lemonade”.
I cut one into a heart and then gave it to my husband to burn (he is not comfortable letting me use his propane torch…..yet).
After burning, I scraped it with a coarse brush.
Here is the end result.
It is large enough that it could be used as a trivet/hot pad. I am kind of obsessed with how the grains of the wood came out. I will be cutting more for sure.
Our motto is ”no wood is scrap”; eventually you will find a use for it.
I like the idea that something essentially broken was able to be turned into a symbol of love.
Lovely.