Plain wooden salad utensils can easily be personalized with a few simple materials. To create your own, all you need is a wood burning tool (these are rather inexpensive and can be found at your local craft store), a pencil, and of course, the wooden serving spoons.
Things You'll Need
Wooden serving utensils
Pencil
Wood burning tool
Step 1
Before you start sketching your design, plug your wood burning tool in to allow it ample time to heat. Set it up on a surface that can stand extreme heat, or set down some foil to protect your surface.
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Step 2
Sketch your design in pencil on your utensils. You can burn your design onto the handles or the bottom, but in this case, the handles were customized. One set received a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song lyric, and the other set a simple set of arrows. (Note: A card could be written to accompany the arrow servers that's a play on the graphic, such as "Thanks for pointing me in the right direction."). Book quotes, or special sayings from the class that year would also make great phrases to burn.
Step 3
Now you are ready to burn! The trick here is to have patience as it takes much more time to follow along your pencil lines with the wood burning tool than it does to simply sketch them in pencil. Slowly move the tip of your tool along your pencil lines, watching it burn and engrave as it travels. Don't worry about covering your pencil marks as you can clean those off after.
Step 4
Once you are finished burning your design, unplug your wood burning tool, and wash your wooden servers with dish soap and water. The remaining pencil marks will wash right off. (If for some reason you run into difficulty cleaning off the pencil markings, they could easily be sanded off with fine paper as well).
Step 5
To wrap them, place them on a kitchen towel and tie the gift together with ribbon or twine.
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