How It All Started

Welcome to the world of Shazbat Designs - or as I'm usually known as, Sharon :)

Like many crafters I originally started doing pyrography as a hobby and never really thought of having my own business, but people started asking me to make items for them or wanting to buy items that I'd made. After much deliberating with my OH I decided to go for it. I've been known as Shazbat for more years than I care to remember so it made sense to use that name for my business. Once I'd decided on a name I checked that there was no other business with the same name and thankfully there wasn't so in 2014 Shazbat Designs was born.

My first pyrography pen was very basic and cost a whole £9 from Lidl. I certainly learnt a lot using this pen as it didn't have any temperature control on it. You learn that just slightly touching the wood with the pen you can get a lighter burn than just going full tilt with a burn and everything basically ends up black. There were lots of different nibs too which were fun to try out but the downside is that you have to wait a long time for the nibs to cool down before you can change over. You could swap whilst still hot but then you run the risk of stripping the threads which can then cause the nibs to fall out whilst you're using them. I learnt this the hard way and still have burns in the carpet to prove it. I progressed to another slightly dearer pen that had a temp control switch but I wasn't really happy with it as it was neither one thing or the other so I then splurged out and bought a Brenn Peter machine. This was the first time using wire tips so it was a whole new way of burning. I loved the whole set-up with the choice of tips and the temp control and I got quite a few years out of it before it broke. After a lot of research I decided to invest in a Peter Childs machine and it's what I'm using to this day.