PORT ORCHARD — When you’re a Cub Scout, it’s called “wood burning.” When you’re an artist spending dozens, if not hundreds, of hours on a piece, its “pyrography” — Greek for writing or drawing with fire.

April Shelton is a pyrographer.

An accomplished photographer and author (she has written and published a children’s book and a young adult fantasy), she had been wood burning for “four or five years” she said.

A large piece, such as the frog on the lily pad, can take more than 300 hours, she said. She starts with taking a photograph. Then she works that image through Photoshop, ultimately creating a drawing of outlines. This can require up to seven levels of overlays. The final image then gets transferred to the wood.

And then the burning begins.

To burn the lines and then shade the figure requires a number of different tips on her wood-burning tools — and heavy cork “donuts” that go around the handles of the electric burning irons to keep from burning herself.

“It can get too hot to hold, otherwise,” she said.

She also makes books. Really, really, tiny books with pyrographic wooden covers. She learned how to hand-make books at the Port Orchard Library, said her mother, Annettee Shelton. Now April makes tiny books to give to kids on the anniversary of the day her father died.

“So we can be glad and not sad,” April said.

April Shelton demonstrated her pyrographic work at the March 11-12 Kitsap County Woodcarvers show in Bremerton. “She’s a great pyrographer,” said Club president mark Campbell. “She deserves the recognition.”

You can learn more about April Shelton and her work at www.amazon.com/author/aprildshelton.

Terryl Asla is a reporter for the Kitsap News Group. He can be reached at tasla@soundpublishing.com.

Shelton makes tiny, handmade books with wooden covers that she decorates so she can give them away to children on the date of her father’s death. “So we can be glad and not said,” she said. She learned book making at the Port Orchard Library. Terryl Asla/Ktsap News Group