Tomorrow we celebrate the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi! Children, and adults alike, find St. Francis easy to love especially because of his love for animals. Since I have had a few extra wooden boxes on hand I decided to make a small treasure box for our son. He loves all God’s creation and I thought I would try out my new wood burner in the process.
Supplies Needed:
- Small wooden box (mine was from Michaels)
- Wood burning tool (a similar one)
- small photocopied image
- pencil
- ball point pen
- acrylic paints
*The book shown in this blog post can be found on Amazon.
Step One: Use a pencil and shade over the back side of your image. I placed my paper up in the window (as a lightbox) so I could see where I needed to be shading. The pencil lead will act as your “carbon paper” for tracing the image onto the box.
Step Two: Place your image into position on the box with the pencil shaded side down to the wood. Carefully hold the image in place while you trace the outlines needed with your ball point pen. Remove paper when complete and discard.
Step Three: Insert the proper tip and heat up your wood burner. I tested the burner slightly on the bottom of the box to get a feel of how it would work in my hand.
Step Four: Burn the outlines you marked on the box in pencil. This is not for perfectionists. You can obviously see where the wood burnt more easily in some areas than others. But for a first time craft I was very pleased with the overall look! Be sure and unplug the wood burning tool as soon as you are done!!!
Step Five: Water down your acrylic paint. Technically you do not have to water down your paint. But if you want to see the beauty of the wood burning it helps to use more of a watercolor effect to see your pyrography.
Look closely at the consistency of the paint on the right side (under the brush.) That is what you need it to look like for painting this project.
I also added an inscription inside of the box. Because I’m a sap like that. 😉
And you are done! I think that ALL kids love treasure boxes and this will be a fun keepsake item for any child to keep their rosary, saint cards, medals… anything related to the Catholic faith in!
How do you plan to mark the feast day of Saint Francis this year?
St. Paul – ::swoon:: From his evil beginnings of persecuting the Church to getting knocked off his horse and infused with the Holy Spirit, how can anyone NOT like him?? The theme of St. Paul for me is one of humility, the realization that God can and will use us regardless of our past sins and/or current sinful state of life if we only submit to His plan for us, and how he constantly exhorts us to always be building up the Church. {remember that last part – it’s kinda an important point, yo}
St. Thérèse of Lisieux – I had no idea she was such a key player in my evangelization efforts until I realized what my strengths were. Like her ability to attribute even the smallest sufferings to the souls in Purgatory, I realized that I, too, have the ability to do the same by thanking God for the ability to evangelize in small, tiny ways. {You might find this comment laughable considering this website is my baby and has found a large audience in such a short time, but really what I’m referring to is what I do personally in a one-on-one basis with people I meet, whether online or IRL}
and sisters and often prayed for her parents’ love to be reciprocated despite their despicable acts against her. Her example of unconditional love is one that I look to, especially in a society that is quick to write people off over the most trivial of acts. We have forgotten our ability to forgive and love. We should also be prepared if we are to effectively evangelize that the world at large will hate us for it. I should mention that I have been having a very strong tug on my heart to talk about Blessed Margaret for a while. She is just quite the amazing example of Christ’s love. If you are a fan of incorruptibles or even if you don’t know what they are, you will appreciate 
St. Francis of Assisi – He is probably one of my all-time favorites because of the infamous phrase attached to him. Though he never said it, it represents who he was and how he lived – “Preach the Gospel always and when necessary use words.” It’s beautiful and it represents how our approach to the Faith should be. Too often I find that people use this phrase as an excuse to not engage others about the Faith and so it sort of gets swept under the rug as not being very effective with evangelizing, but my personal take on it is simply this: You should live your Faith in such a way that people are IRRESISTIBLY drawn to whatever it is that you have. You OOZE the Holy Spirit. Like a moth to the flame, they don’t even realize you are Catholic because you are so busy living out the Faith in an infectious way that you naturally draw people in. When these people finally DO approach you about the Faith, they have already seen your faith in action and now want to know how to get some of what you’ve got. That’s when the “and when necessary use words” comes in. There is no dismissal of the importance of words if we truly understand how St. Francis lived. We just realized that it takes some balance in bringing others to know Christ and His Church. For some that means our example needs to be silent, for others it means we engage in conversations with them, and still for others it’s a mixture of the two. If we are truly on our evangelizing game {sharpening our tools through frequent attendance of Mass, prayer, confession, consultation with a spiritual director, etc.} then we can read others well enough to know what will reach them most effectively and how to not only bring them to know Christ but to get them so excited to turn around and do the same – in Protestant language, they call it “being on fire for the Lord.”