Wax page in my Paperartsy journal

The third topic this year for Paperartsy blog was wax… wax! Not something I felt confident about.   Gelatos were mentioned in Leandra’s blog post introducing the theme though so I started with them and started on this page way back on 9th February!

So these photos show the first stage of play… gelatos scribbled randomly in blocks.  Water added with fingers to blend.  More colour added and blended.  Gesso added randomly with finger and blended.

Later that day I added a stamped border on each page using some Dylusions stamps Karen let me use.  I also added more gelatos and more gesso.

Starting to build a nice background. But not exactly wax in my book! Off I went to watch You Tube videos and of course keep my eye on the Paperartsy blog design team contributors.

I love Darcy’s completely fabulous wax poppy picture which showed lots of wax techniques. I also loved a You Tube video someone posted in the Patwits group showing papers being waxed and sewn. These took me down the route I ended up taking.

But first I used some grunge paste mixed with a purple paint through a stencil to provide some texture.

Then I added some shavings of kids wax crayons in splodges and melted them with my heat gun with a piece of paper over the top to stop then from moving about too much.

I must admit this wasn’t really going well. I was struggling to control the wax but I do think it adds some interest to the background.

Next time to do the feature image.

I stamped the mannequin in Watering Can archival and then the text in Seedless Preserves distress ink onto some photocopy paper and tore it into a nice shape. Then I put the piece on a tray and melted a Yankee candle onto the paper until the whole piece was covered. I then set it aside to dry. The benefits of using a scented candle is that it smelt lovely in the craft room as a result! 🙂

I then took the rest of the photocopy paper and tore that as a mount, crinkled it up and inked it with the distress inks (seedless preserve and abandoned coral).

Round the edge I stamped the zip stamp from the same Hot Picks Paperartsy stamps.

I then used my sewing machine to sew these together in my usual scruffy sewing style.

I then added this to the journal with matt medium and left it to dry. I then felt that the title should be in a similar colour to the mounting panel. I stamped that onto the scrap, tore it out and inked it up.

At this point I felt that it needed something else.

I grabbed some teal coloured gilding wax and added in a few random areas. This gave it some more depth and shine and also incorporated another wax!

Decided it needed some more stamping…

The scissors were stamped… and then words!

I grabbed the ink and the Dog buttons plate and stamped words from that in the distress inks randomly which I think really finished the page off nicely. I then edged the pages with Midnight Muse ink and added the topic and month at the bottom.

A really long post showing all the steps so of you got this far… well done! I am trying to show stages as best as I can so people can see how I work when putting together a page. It also helps me document how I got to where I am. Next topic to be tacked is image transfer which is not my best skill… may take some practice!

Happy crafting!

Catherine