Making your own craft tools: Wands

Wands

I like crafting things and I consider myself as very artistic person, that generally makes it easy to me learn different methods and are huge help when I get an idea of something that I need. Over the years of drawing, painting and doing other crafts, I have huge collection of materials at hand, so basically, I don’t need to purchase many new things to work out the idea I have.

For making wands, I looked for suitable branches when walking in the forests and parks, I prefer to use fallen branches for this purpose and most of the time I pick the ones that already have been on the ground long time, the time has done the job for those and usually there is not much to do to get them clean and even, as there are minimum amount of bark and dirt on them and usually those are the ones that has peculiar look on them.

I use few tools to work on the branches; if I want to make certain designs on them, I usually sketch the rough image on the wood with pencil. When carving the image, I use sharp craft knife and wood file to even out the curves and cutting wood from the lines. Then I take different types of sanding paper and sand the designs and the surface smooth for touch.

It does take a time, depending on how complicated the design is and how much wood you have to take out, and lots of sanding, because I tend to paint the work, so the surface has to be even. Because it is an item that usually are held in hand, it needs to be smooth and clean from the splinters and such.

For painting or staining, I use what paints I have at hand, most of the time it is just watercolors and chalk, and they work smaller pieces perfectly. For this type of painting job, use varnish after painting, so the colors will stay on it even when it gets wet. I like to use shiny varnish, but it depends on the look of the wand which type of varnish suits.

For making wands you need the branches, sanding papers, crafting knife, files, paint, and varnish. With these items you can do many crafty things later too, so I don’t think they go waste if you like to do things by yourself. You can use other materials if your design and plan for the wand needs it, but these are the basic items that gets you started.