Hello
Wishing you a big welcome to my little crafting place, thank you so much for coming by!
As I’ve said in my last couple of posts, this year hasn’t got off to the best start and as a result my crafting mojo has been distinctly lacking!
‘VeAt last though I felt well enough, and interested enough to spend an hour with my wax seal gear. Right from the start I’ve found a quiet calm and peacefulness in this craft so it seemed the best place to start getting back into crafting.
Theres something about the wax seal-making process that needs you to concentrate and be 'in the moment' (yes its an overused phrase but I can't think of anything better at the moment!
Anyway, I thought I'd share a couple of photos of my wax seal set-up. It requires moving the mess already in my workspace, but I couldn't be bothered to put it away so I just moved it on to the floor!
I have a big glass mat on my desk and usually a self-healing mat on top of that. I know from past experience that the latter are not heat-resistant, so I remove that replace it with a large silicone mat instead. I add a smaller A4 glass mat (totally unecessary and just to keep the lower one clean of wax). My wax ovens sit in shallow dishes - because sometime the little candles spill over and I'd rather not have melted candle wax going all over the place.
The marble coaster is for the final pour as I want the seal to cool quickly. My spoons are non-stick ones as I just prefer them to the usual brass ones. The blobs of white wax you can see are leftover wax - you can usually just 'pop' them out of a non-stick spoon ready to use again later. The spoons lined up contain wax I used the day before and thought I might use in this session. The other important thing you can see in the first photo is a piece of kitchen towel - used for cleaning the outside of the spoon after a pour, to wipe out the spoon when I'm done with that colour and to clean my spatulas etc.
At the other side of the desk you can see some of the tools I most regularly use. There's also an electric warmer - this one is supposed to be for keeping drinks hot but it seems to do this job too. I wanted something with a flat surface so that the metal of my spatulas keep contact with the warm surface. I've found that the flap (platform) of my Sizzix Switch is just the right height to rest the handles on. The pieces of kitchen roll are just to stop them sliding about!
The metal spatulas are required to wipe away exxess wax when making Pour and Scrape seals - for the 'scrape' bit! They arealso handy for cleaning wax from around the metal seal's edge and other things like cleaning up the silicone mat
I've got a gas lighter (the sort you might have in the kitchen) to light my candles (blue handle)
Silicone spoon/spatulas are from Spellbinders and are great and I highly recommend then because the ends are firm enough to actually clean out spare wax from the spoons. The first ones I bought were rubbish and too floppy to do this - I cut the ends off and just use them to stir the heating wax.
After a while you end up with a lot of handles for stamps as mostly they come with a handle - you don't need more than two or three, so try to buy where you can choose a seal-only option. Those I most use are the shorter ones you can see in the photo,possibly because they are prettier!
The turquoise ones came with some absolutely gorgeous mini stamps also from Spellbinders
Tweezers are handy when moving hot things - like if you need to change your candle. I bought some sharp, pointy scissors especsailly to keep for wax cutting jobs. You can;t have enough scissors. I also have a set of various double ended clay tools which come in handy, especially the pointy ones for cleaning out obstinate bits of wax from seals.
So, in the photos above you can see wax melting on the ovens and you may have noticed a seal standing on the warmer too. When you do the Pour and Scrape, you'll be using at least 2 different colours of wax so the two ovens are handy. The tulip seal I've been praciticing with has 3 colours, so I tend to put the thrid colour into a spoon and rest it on the electric warmer to start with, then just keep swapping the spoons around until all are melted. You also need to warm the actual seal - this is the tricky bit as you don't want it to get hot, just warm enough to still be able to touch it with your finger
For the tulips I did the green layer first, scraping away all the excess wax leaving only some in the stem and leaf sections. When the green ran into the tulip head I used the point of a clay tool to clear it out. Next I added the wax for the head and again scraped the excess away - this is where you find out if the wax seal was over-heated as the two colours will run together and make a mess. The thrid wax colour is for the background and here's where I pour onto the marble coaster. Then the seal is stamped into the background layer and with luck when its removed the tulips will look good.
I was pretty happy with these two, They need a bit of 'cleaning up' though. I think I'll cut around the main section to remove the rather tatty edges then pour a neater shape and add them to that. I also need to colour the ribbons with a pen, which I'm really useless at so there's plenty of chances for these to all go wrong.
Once I've finished I'll add another post with the results! Keep your fingers crossed
Just a Note
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- you can use it to access the store whenever you buy from Spellbinders
It doesn't cost you anything, but I may get a little reward for pointing you there.
There's
a UK based shop now, so you can use the 'Visit Our UK Store' button at
the top right of any page on the Spellbinders site
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Thank you so much for coming by
Happy Crafting, Take care of yourself, and please come back soon!
Kathy xx
