Beeswax Final (.... and an announcement)

I'm thrilled to announce that I'm a new member on the design team for this company: inchie arts, llc.

I've loved their product since receiving a box of Inchie Squares from a dear friend as a birthday gift last year.

It's a thick, high quality, acid free, archival material that is extremely useful in the making of "inchies" (1 inch square), "inchies +" (1.5 inch square) and "twinchies" (2 inch square).

I was happy with cereal box cardboard until I started using these.

There really is no comparison.

They take the glue, the inks, the watercolors, the collage, the beeswax - beautifully.

They give your inchies that special heavy feeling that makes you want to hold them in your hand and drop them on the table like poker chips. That might sound kinda weird - but it's a very tactile thing to hold a handful of inchies.

As you know, I've been playing with beeswax for the last 2 weeks ....

I also received materials from inchie arts to "play" with at about the same time.

So, I'm wrapping up my beeswax tutorial with these two twinchies.

I used the "Twinchie Squares" in white.

In these examples I used:

oil pastel

and collage.

In the oil pastel example, I really worked the pigment into the twinchie square base. I used several layers of color. Rubbing in, rubbing off, rubbing in some more, scratching off. If you haven't tried oil pastels and you're the sort of person who used to love finger painting as a kid, this medium is definitely for you. It's very hands on, can get pretty messy, but is very satisfying for creating your own colors and depths of color. You definitely need to apply some type of coating to oil pastel though. It will continue to rub off every time you touch it if you don't. I used beeswax, but an acrylic medium also works great.

The thing with using beeswax on oil pastel is that some of the oil pastel will melt and swirl around in the beeswax - giving it a softening effect. So just be careful - and know that you'll lose some definition in the heat of the wax.

For the collage example, I wanted to follow the same image I had done in the oil pastel. I thought it would be fun to see the differences. I used only torn or cut paper from a magazine. The magazine paper is sometimes tricky to glue down because of it's slick coating, but it stuck perfectly well to the twinchie square base. I think in the past I've had trouble because cereal box cardboard has a slick surface as well. I used to sand it as prep, but even that would still sometimes fail and everything would peel up later.

I dipped this in beeswax as well - which I just LOVE with collage. It really gives the layers of paper a depth and transluscence that I love. I applied the krylon pen edging after the fact, because it will dissolve completely off in the hot beeswax.

Thanks for hanging out with me through almost 2 weeks of beeswax!!!

It's been so much fun ....

I think we all wish we could get together now for a beeswax fondue party

.... at my house!

Now THAT would be fun!