Wax Seal Embellies

 Well here I go again.  Jumping 100% in on a new adventure for me.  Wax seals.  Well kind of new adventure.  Way way back when I was young and it was a "Thing" to have "Pen pals" from different countries it was not unusual to dabble with wax seals.  Those adorable old fashion wax closures you would see on letters in movies, especially ole Victorian movies when special letters were sent through the post.  This was to assure the receiver that the letter or special papers had not been seen as long as the seal on the envelope had not been broken.  My mother being quite a crafty person (probably where I got it from) made me my own seal by taking a brand new Nickle and rubber cementing it to a small spool of thread (as the handle).  I would then drip the wax from an actual candle on the envelope after I had licked it shut then impressed the wax with the Nickle.  

I decided to bring back the wax so to say!  Excited to re-try something old (but not with a Nickle) I hit up Amazon for some supplies.  Valentines Day is on it's way so I indeed wanted a heart stamp and I might as well get an easter one.  Then while I was at it I leaped toward 2 Christmas and then thought I should at least have 2 everyday ones.  Because of course you should never try something new with the bare minimum right?  Then of course I needed wax.  Well there are the candle type ones that you light and drip. But I think those are more for letters.  I want to do embellies so I kept looking.  Well they had these chips.  Well ok....but then you need the spoon and the warmer base and the tea light candles to melt the chips.  Ahhhh...here we go I found wax glue sticks.  I have a bunch of glue guns so I could dedicate 1 to wax.  So I bought a pack of pink for Valentines day and a pack of metallics just because I wanted them.

So my supplies come in and I think I'm ready to go.  Well...Slow down Susan.  This is harder than I remember.  I had a silicone mat to use and melted some pink wax, went to impress it and...hmmmm.  How long do I have to hold this?  When I lifted it was stringing.  So I set it back down and let go of the stamp piece and it sunk so far that when I was able to pull it off the stamp it was nearly translucent.  Try again  This time I held it. Dang it when I lifted it wasn't cooled enough on the bottom and it got a ripply bottom.  Try again.  Hold......hand tired....this is dumb.....can't be right....how long does this take?  I think I need YouTube.

You can see the seal on the far top right how thin it is that's my first.  Then the one on the middle left is the bottom with the blubs from when I lifted too early before it was fully cooled.

Instead went out for coffee with my BFF and had a long talk.  Certain things came to light.  One was that the pink sticks were not wax at all.  They were labeled Acrylic.  The metallic ones are labeled wax/resin.  Still have not tried those.  Another thing we talked about was real glue sticks.  Could those be used?  Could you then use Mica powers to highlight them?  Hmmmmm interesting.  So home I went to check out these ideas.  Interesting....glue from your normal glue gun works!  Mica powders work great too and so do Dollar Tree Mermaid eye shadows.  Its subtle but pretty.  I also found that the metal stamp pops right off quickly if you are using both a low melt gun and if your metal stamp is cool to the touch.  So I kept it on top of a bag of ice and rotated which stamp I was using.  I then took off and tried an entire bag of Dollar Tree mini glitter glue sticks with excellent results.  The less intricate the design the better with those sticks but it worked!

Regular hot glue before using eye shadow

or Mica powder

I can't wait to show you what I make with all these as soon as I figure that out Hahahahaha.

For now this is it. I need to make more of the Pink ones for Valentine cards I want to make.   I'll be back next time with what you can do with these beauties.  Til then Happy Crafting!

Accordion Tag Card

 One of the hardest cards I have to make are birthday cards for boys.  You would thing those would be the easiest for me since I raised 2 boys, my sisters all had boys, my brother had twin boys.  I was surrounded by boys.  But I am ALL GIRL!  I love making "PRETTY" things.  Flowers , Butterflies, Birds, Pinks, Purples and so on and so on and so on.  So of course it took me all day trying to figure out what to do for a 9 year olds card.  Now top it off with the fact that this 9 year old has Fragile X Syndrome.  An inherited chromosome disability.  Jack will probably just toss this card aside and never really look at it.  But his mom will and she cherishes the cards I have made for her other 3 children and I do not want to skimp on Jacks just because he won't care.  Though the card may be viewed by him for a brief second I do know that he loves yellow.  Sponge Bob being a favorite of his to see on TV.  I had already made a few Sponge Bob cards so no way I was doing that again but yellow I could stick with.  Bright colors are also a favorite of his so I went through some of the papers I put aside for my granddaughter to mess around with and found some really bright prints.

The only yellow cardstock I had was pretty thin cardstock.  I think I got it from Michaels in a small 12x12 pack that had primary colors.  This may have only been 65lb.  So I decided to make an accordion card so that I could beef up the thickness with layers and make it sturdier.  I also decided to make pockets on the inside to hold some tags.  I chose to hold only 2 but you could fill each pocket with a tag or maybe one of them with a gift card.  One of my tags was just for show the other I used to sign the back.  I then went ahead and used the scraps to decorate the envelope to match.

The finished size of this card measures 3" x 5.5".  I used a standard envelope that I bought from the Dollar Tree and just decorated it.  There is no glitter or sequins on this card so there is nothing that Jack could ingest that could harm him it is all only paper.  Although truth be told he will probably not even open it.  But his mother will love the fact that I have made him a special card just as I have made all her other kids special cards and that's what matters.

Now I can go back to "Girlie".  LOL  I need a card for a friends birthday next week.  Whewwww.  She loves frilly stuff.

Til next time.....................................