If you are a fan of natural materials, then it's time to pay attention to the original souvenirs made of wood. DIY gifts made using natural objects will be memorable and memorable. Choose your favorite wooden workpiece technique. Create beauty yourself.
Options and Ideas
Unusual wood products (gifts or just home decorations) can be made with your own hands from what is easy to find in nature and prepare on your own or on the basis of purchased objects for decoration. It is easy to choose a gift idea from the following list:
- A cutting board, a panel, an element of dishes or kitchen utensils, decorated with a pattern and text made by burning with a special device.
- The same or other objects (key holders, flowerpots, furniture elements, frames for photographs or mirrors), decorated with color drawings using decoupage technique.
- The same as in the previous paragraph, only made by hand-painted (a more complex, but exclusive version).
- Decorating any suitable object with a cut out pattern (relief).
- Photo frame, mirrors, stand, glass decoration, bottles with branches decor.
- A souvenir made of wood cuts or thin branches (frames, panels, hot coasters, figures of people and animals).
So, there are many options. There is a choice. Some methods are very simple, others require special tools and skills.
Branch Decorations
Unusual gifts from a tree to a man can be made by February 23, New Year's or birthday. From the branches you get a beautiful frame for a photo or packaging, a decor for a bottle of cognac or other alcohol.
The work goes like this:
- Cut branches on the nature.
- Divide each long piece into several short pieces along the length of your object, for example, the height of the vertical part of the bottle. Slices can be made perpendicular to the central axis or at an angle. In the second case, the cut will not be round, but oval.
- Connect the workpieces to each other in the form of a three-dimensional structure or flat, if you are making a frame, using a heat gun or braid with wire, twine. The latter will easily fulfill the role of decor. This method will create original gifts in a marine or rural theme.
Decoupage
You can buy wooden souvenirs made using this technique. Hand-made gifts are now becoming more and more popular. But to make such an object yourself is not difficult.
The work goes like this:
- Buy a wooden blank in the form of a heart, a house or letters. Simple in the form of a cutting board is not difficult to do yourself.
- Prime a clean, sanded surface with a special compound or any white acrylic primer . Even paint will do. As a tool for work, use a brush or sponge (sponge).
- Allow the workpiece to dry.
- If necessary, repeat the procedure several times until a smooth surface is obtained without smudges or spots.
- Take a special decoupage card with drawings, rice paper or a regular table napkin and cut it out, or rather, pinch it off with your fingers, carefully the images, leaving a little white background around the edges.
- For napkins, be sure to separate the layer with the image from the base, otherwise the white part will remain on the wooden blank, and the picture itself will peel off.
- Apply PVA glue or special decoupage glue to the picture laid on the wooden primed workpiece.
- Carefully smooth the brush over the image of the wooden object from the center to the edges.
- Glue all the images in this way.
- After drying, paint over the details with a brush (can be used on a stencil).
- Varnish. If necessary, make several layers with preliminary drying of the previous one.
Burning out
In this way, you can make a personalized gift from a tree with your own hands, since with the help of a burner you will complete any inscription. The work is done simply:
- A contour drawing of the desired pattern or image is applied to the wooden base.
- With a burning device, you precisely trace the contours of objects, make strokes - in a word, work like a pencil or pen.
Wood carving
You can make original gifts from wood by decorating the finished object with a relief-carved pattern. It’s so good to design a panel, a cutting board. Cutting on a rounded surface, for example, on a wooden glass, and a particularly repeating ornament is much more difficult than a composition of different objects, for example, on New Year's themes. As an idea, you can choose a bouquet of flowers in a vase. For carving, special tools are used - sharp knives and chisels. The image is cut out in the form of a relief according to a previously applied contour image.
Wood painting
If you know how to work with a brush and paints, then easily make exclusive gifts from wood for a wedding anniversary, anniversary or other holiday. The decoupage technique described above is a lightweight version of the painting. If you know how to perform complex images with a brush and paints yourself, you don’t need any napkins or glue. Pick or develop thematic pictures yourself, apply contour patterns on a wooden surface and begin to work. The remaining stages coincide with the decoupage technique (primer, drying, varnishing).
An original souvenir from a clothespin
If you know how to draw, paints and brushes are available, but there is very little time, and you certainly want to make a gift from a tree to newlyweds, lovers, or on your wedding anniversary, use the original idea presented in this section.
Work like this:
- Take a regular wooden clothespin.
- Draw the contours of the details on the sample so that you get a hugging couple.
- Paint the blank in the colors of the elements of clothing that your friends usually wear, or in wedding dresses.
- Dry the product.
- Apply the varnish, only dry it so that it does not stick together, that is, when opened.
Gift for the wedding: a tree of saw cuts
The original souvenir can be made in the form of panels on the wall. The created tree will symbolize strong family ties. In addition, on each cut, if size allows, it is not difficult to write a wish or names of guests.
To make such a souvenir, work like this:
- Prepare cuts according to the size of your product. Do not make them too thick.
- Remove the bark, dry and sand the surface of the workpieces.
- Write the text on large cuts or perform it in the technique of burning. You can also make some thematic drawings on the surface of each element.
- If the image is painted on the cuts or applied using the decoupage technique, varnish the surface of the workpiece. Burning is usually not varnished.
- Prepare a base (for example, a plywood sheet) or a wire frame, although a small construction can be done without them.
- Connect the saws in turn among themselves, for example with the help of hot glue.
- Varnish the finished structure if you did not carry out this step with each element separately.
By this principle, you can assemble absolutely any design by combining saw cuts of different sizes. Crafts in this technique are easy to make for the New Year in the form of a simplified triangular Christmas tree, wreath, month; on Valentine's Day or on a wedding to make hearts, swans. In a word, there are a lot of opportunities to show imagination.
Wood Wedding Present
For every holiday, I want to present to the dear person something unusual and memorable. On a date such as a wedding anniversary, you definitely need to present a special souvenir, and it does not matter how many years are celebrated: a year, five, ten or forty.
If you decide to buy or make an exclusive gift for your spouses with your own hands, pay attention to ideas such as rings, a pair of trees connected in a single crown, hugged figures. Also often do numbers, names, initials. An interesting option is a medal made of wood with text.
Such souvenirs are especially relevant on the fifth anniversary of the wedding, as it is called a wooden wedding. In general, any of the above methods of making a gift is suitable as a decoration for a wedding souvenir. The main thing is to choose the right blank for the right topic.
You can make gifts with a share of irony. Such options are suitable for spouses with a sense of humor. They are good to present to each other.
For example, the idea is this:
- From the branches you cut the likeness of logs.
- Collect from them a support for sawing firewood.
- Put a large workpiece on the goats.
- In a log, mount a decorative saw, which can be made from the remaining sheet metal or even a cardboard blank glued with foil.
- Be sure to add a humorous inscription to the souvenir (on the saw or next to the composition) “drank, but know the measure” or something similar with a hint of the wife’s reproaches.
So, you can make completely different wooden souvenirs with your own hands. Gifts made by any of the proposed methods will be very original and memorable. Choose the appropriate method based on the materials available and the amount of time you are willing to spend on work.