I have a cute and easy DIY Valentine’s Day gift idea for you: DIY wood burned spoons! You can make these for any season and they’re a practical and customizable handmade gift idea. I made mine with little hearts, so they’re especially cute for Valentine’s Day. Here’s how to make a set of your own DIY wood burned spoons.
Supplies for DIY Wood Burned Spoons:
- Unfinished wood spoons (easy to find pretty much anywhere, mine came from Dollarama)
- Scrap wood (to test)
- Wood burner
- Heart stencils (optional, you can free-hand)
- Pencil
- Hard work surface (like a big cutting board, to work on)
How to Make DIY Wood Burned Spoons:
My spoons were super cheap from the dollar store, and I wish I had sanded the edges a bit first. If buy really cheap inexpensive wood spoons too, you might want to do a little prep work. Otherwise, you can move onto the first step: find a stencil or freehand your design and draw it on to the spoon with a pencil.
Attach a tip to your wood burner (I used two different kinds, pictured below) and heat it up. Use a scrap piece of wood and experiment with the wood burner to get a feel for how it works because wood burning is a doodle that can’t be un-did (lol) – and you don’t want to ruin your wood spoons! It’s easy to wood burn, but you just need to spend a few seconds practising to get a feel for the tool first. Then gently trace the heart shape(s) with the wood burner. I find it easiest to outline the shape and then fill it in. I pressed down repeatedly to burn the wood, as opposed to dragging the tool like you would a marker. My method created a nice texture I liked and it was easy to get a nice dark burn.
Then I used the really pointed tip to get into the point of the heart:
Afterwards you can oil the spoons with a food safe wood oil, but I left mine plain for maximum contrast. Wood burned designs would look so good on a walnut wood spoon (I linked the exact brand I’ve bought, it’s really nice), because after it’s oiled it would look really rich and gorgeous, with less contrast between the wood tone and the wood burned design.
You can do a few simple hearts – or really fill it with designs! You can also focus the design on the handle, if you prefer, and add really custom details like names, dates, quotes and more. Pair these with a special, handwritten recipes, a homemade brownie mix, or a dozen aqua eggs if you have chickens!
Since making DIY wood burned ornaments with a friend, I haven’t used a wood burner but I really would like to experiment more. I’ve done this on a larger scale, sort of, with my shou sugi ban wood burned step and shou sugi ban picture frame DIY. But I’d like to experiment with this wood burning tool. It’s a great craft for all skills levels because you can start by creating really basic designs like this and, with two seconds of practice, create something really cute. But with experience and more education, you can really get into it and do shading and detailed work. It’s a craft project that is fun for any skill level! Plus I really like the smell of the charred wood – this is the perfect cozy winter craft!
A little behind the scenes fun: Hynda kept rolling her ball into my makeshift photography set up and then sighing. I don’t know how I get any work done around here, haha…
Then she crawled in my lap and pushed her ball from there.
Aren’t these DIY wood burned spoons the cutest?
P.S. Don’t Forget to Pin for Later!
