Our poor old crayons have a hard life with us. Just this week alone my daughters made recycled crayons in skull and LEGO silicone molds for a birthday gift, got out the power tools to experiment with drilling on some big crayons, and used up all the candles in the house making encaustic art with crayons. As the three of us sat at our big living room table, the kiddos melting crayons all over artist’s canvas, me working on an altered book for an anniversary present for my husband, I took a second look at their pools of molten wax and my little clay stamps, and all of a sudden I had another recycled embellishment for my book. Whether you’d like to use a wax seal on a letter, a gift, or your own altered art, this candle + stamp method is just as quick and easy as using traditional sealing wax supplies–and it’s cheaper! If you’ve ever used my encaustic crayon art tutorial, the beginning of this project will look familiar. Take an unbroken crayon (it’s longer, so that your fingers can grip it better away from the flame), remove the wrapper using an X-acto knife to slice the paper, and light a candle. Hold the flame to the tip of the crayon just above the point where you’d like your wax seal, and allow several drops of melted crayon to puddle on that spot. Next » Give the wax several seconds to firm up–you’ll want to use your stamp not when the wax is liquid, but when it’s firm enough to hold its shape when stamped, and yet soft enough to be malleable under the stamp’s edges. For my own work, I found that I got the best results when I used stamps meant for sculptural elements–clay stamps, stamps that can be hammered into metal, and my vintage sealing wax stamps (of course). Rubber stamps did leave an impression, however, and although they didn’t work well for me on plain matte book paper, I’m wondering if a different surface, or a different type of stamp, or even a different type of crayon, couldn’t give some really detailed, sophisticated looks. If you experiment, please share your results!
