As Kiri has been coppicing hazel, she’s identified wood that would be good as thumbsticks (walking poles where you pop your thumb into the v shape at the top), trimmed off side-shoots, stripped off the bark from the top, smoothed it all back to a nice finish, then burnt intricate designs into the wood

This is one of several knives that Steve whittled and then Kiri burned a design onto using a pyrography pen. Most are made of birch, which is food-safe, therefore could be used as a butter knife… but as some are made of other woods, we’ve been calling them letter openers or paper knives

This was originally a sketch on paper on a ferry, but Kiri transferred this onto wood, burning the design on with a pyrography pen, then adding touches of colour with paint

This was the first large piece of pyrography artwork that Kiri produced, taking around 12 hours to burn by hand onto the board once it had been sanded. The dark areas were created using a ballpoint pyrography nib – producing lots of small dots and a beautiful texture

Kiri made these pendants from birch wood that she cleaved with a froe, then whittled down into a teardrop shape. Once sanded back, she burnt these designs by hand onto the wood with her pyrography pen, oiled the pendants then attached a leather cord

Kiri is part of the Westonbirt Coppice Products group and one of their products is charcoal made from the wood harvested at Westonbirt. Kiri was asked to redesign the bag in which the charcoal is sold and produced this image and layout.

Taking slices of of beautiful cherry wood, Kiri sanded them, then used pyrography to create a variety of designs as Christmas decorations. These were then finished off with red and green twine to allow them to hang on trees

In 2024 Kiri started experimenting with pyrography (free hand burning of designs into wood). So far this has mainly been on hand-cleft birch wood

During the talks at our church, we’re encouraged to express ourselves creatively, so there are pads of paper with pencil crayons available for all. Here are a selection of the illustrations that Kiri produced during a variety of church talks through 2024

This was our fourth advent window – this time created with masking tape instead of electrical tape (in the hope that it would be easier to clean off… in fact it was harder to clean off!). Luke 1v78-79 in the New Living Translation reads:

Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace.