Using a Scorch Marker on Wooden Ornament Blanks

During the fall Prime Days, there was a sale on Scorch Markers. I saw these online a while back and thought that they looked super cool--you can burn wood without using a wood-burning tool, and since it's a marker, you can use stencils. This is not a sponsored post, I purchased this marker and thought I'd share how it went when I used it for the first time.

A few weeks ago, I cut a bunch of designs out of vinyl with my Silhouette Cameo. So far I've made a bunch of signs, but this time I just used a star cut-out as a stencil. You could easily just cut a star out of some sticky shelf liner or contact paper to achieve the same results without needing to own a cutting machine.

I applied my vinyl to some wooden ornament blanks and got out my Scorch Marker.

The marker needed to be primed like a paint marker, but after that, it worked really easily.

I colored inside the star outline and outside of the star itself to see how the vinyl worked as a stencil and how the marker worked over larger areas. Once I colored them in, I peeled the vinyl off.

I used my embossing heat gun to turn the marker into a scorched design by holding it above the design and moving the gun back and forth so it didn't overdo any areas. The Scorch Marker website recommends using a stronger heat gun and not one of these wimpy little embossing guns, but it's what I had, so we gave it a whirl.

It was fairly slow going with the embossing gun, but with the smaller star design, it wasn't too long before the area colored by the marker turned a pleasant shade of burnt.

The ornament with the larger area colored took a really long time to burn. 

When it was done, it was kind of splotchy and still fairly pink.

So, I came back the next day and burnt it some more. I had been working on a silicone craft mat, but with how long I had to heat the ornament, I decided to move it onto a pan on my stovetop, so I didn't burn my table. It came out a bit blotchier than the other ornament with the smaller design. Maybe it needed a bit of sanding before burning, or maybe it was just because of how long I had to heat the ornament to get it to burn somewhat evenly. 

So, does the Scorch Marker work? Can I really just color over an area and then heat it up to get a wood-burning design? Yes! Does it work with an embossing tool/crafting heat gun? Sort of. I have a new stronger heat gun on the way, so I'll let you know how big of a difference it makes.

Update: I got a new heat gun with more power. It still takes a few minutes to warm up enough to make the change in the ink, but it seems to be a lot less blotchy and more consistent in color with the more powerful heat gun. Although, I did have to hold the ornaments down with a skewer as the gun wanted to blow the light blanks off the table.