Monday, February 2, 2009

heART Card - the creation

Here's a brief tutorial on beeswax collage - feel free to ask questions!

I found a 'butter warmer' at Bi-Mart, it's perfect for warming a small amount of wax. The tea light lasted for all twenty valentines. For a larger project, I'd use a double boiler or crock pot, but for a small job, this worked well.

I propped the brush against my knife rack, to keep it upright. I used a piece of cardboard as my surface for placing the elements & ironing them.











The base is a watercolour paper circle, covered with a 'donut' cut from a pretty red & gold print napkin. Next comes a doily.










Each step includes painting the surface with melted beeswax, then heating that with the blow dryer (which seems to work fine) & Ironing that layer down.






This is repeated for each layer.







I covered the center of the doilies with a layer of pink tissue paper.






Next is a heart cut from a napkin scrap. I covered this with a layer of plain red tissue.







I printed hearts on red tissue, using gold acrylic paint on a stamp I'd cut into a heart shaped eraser. & last - a shimmer of gold powdered pigment, to outline each heart! Viola - heART Art :)







The valentines remind me of the ones my mom would help me make, using construction paper & doilys. Before deciding on the stamp, I'd thought of running a banner with a word (like a candy hart) across each heART, but I like the gold stamp!

Last Friday, I picked up a two pound block of beeswax from a local beekeeper - so I'm well set for salve & collage :)

3 comments:

Cheryl Ann said...

Dia, these look wonderful!! I am so excited for these packages of heART loveliness!
Thanks for sharing your process, and for visiting my blog.
Have a beautiful day!

Lisa said...

So pretty! Thanks for the tutorial! I recently found my small "crockpot" for heating potpourri. I'm saving it to use for melting wax if I ever get out there and get some. :)

Tammie Lee said...

Dia,
I enjoyed reading how you made your valentines! My package arrived yesterday and before I went to bed I sat and looked at each one. Thank you for your lovely heART card! And it smells like bees wax, one of my favorite scents in the world!