My husbans got me a Razertip burner for christmas, and i’ve been non stop burning ever since.  There’s two simultaneous things going on…one is that the new burner has an amazing amount of control in a very specific area, and with very little carbonization.  But the other is that I have been pushing and testing my artistic boundaries.  The result is a jump in my my abilities in my art.

So first, the burner.

The A/B Switch gives me the ability to have two pens plugged in simultaneously.  They don’t heat simultaneously, but they heat up and cool down so quickly that it doesn’t matter.  The dial is the temperature, which I use somewhere around 4 for light shading, and 7 for black work.  The other button is the on/off button.

This is the pen tip.  The pen itself is vented on the side to release heat.  I don’t have to stop because the pen doesn’t get as hot.

They connect via RCA jacks.  I’m super happy with the design.

So I had a little project I’d been putting on hold for a while and I picked it back up.  It’s going to need it’s own post, really.  But basically I wanted to try Celtic Knots.  I wasn’t sure if I could draw them, or if I’d be able to burn them.  I wasn’t sure how the shading would work, but I felt like I could do it.

I had this wooden wreath looking thing that had a stag head in the center that I had found at Michael’s.  I’d been working with that, and in five days, I had this:

It’s worth blowing up and taking a look at the details.  The rabbit on the left hand side especially, and the shading on the skull around the eyes.  I’m super happy with the result.

I also did a minor project for a friend, burning a sign that had been manually carved.  It was easy and fast because the letters were already embedded in the wood.  It would have been slower if I had to drawn them and space them out.

I’ve stained it since then, and I have some close up shots of the letters.  I’ll do that in another post.

But I’m still here, and I’m still burning.