Advanced wax sealing: how to create unique wax seals

1. Introduction: Hi everybody. Those who already watched my previous course know that I am Reina. I'm a calligrapher and engraver based in Berlin. And if you want to upgrade your wax ceiling skill, then this course is for you. In this course, I will show you different techniques and materials that you can use in order to make your wax seals more beautiful and more elevated and actually unique. You can create your own style of wax seals. Beginners are also welcomed in this course, even though I recommend first to watch my previous course on how to begin your wax ceiling journey. But mainly this course is for those who already had their first interactions with wax seal, an intermediate or an advanced skill in wax ceiling. 2. Wax seal with different colour edge: Hello everybody and welcome back. You might be wondering, why are we starting with a bowl of water and ice in it? This is actually a trick in order for you to create multiple wax seals faster. This is going to help you cool down your wax stamp. You just need to place a plastic foil, just like I'm doing here. It's recommended the foil to be bigger than the opening of the ball. You can see here, mine is a little bit smaller but I will not be using it anyways. It was just to show you guys, you just place the plastic foil and then you leave there your stamps for a little while and then you can use them faster. Let's get started on the actual wax seals, shall we? For our first example, we are going to create a wax seal with two different colors. I'm picking here, the first color is going to be this gorgeous, gorgeous orange. I'm placing that in one of my melting spoons. For our second color, we are going to pick this yellow right here. I'm going to place it in my second spoon. How we're going to do it is we are going to melt the first color. The base color. I'd like to say after we stamp that, we're going to stamp on top our second color with our second stamp. I'm just going to melt the wax first. I'd like to remind you guys not to place your spoon too close to the flame, otherwise, it's going to create too many bubbles like I did right here. I sped up the process so you don't have to wait while the wax is melting. We're going to pour our wax on the silicon mat. We're going to take our clean wax stamp first, which means it's just a round stamp, it actually has no design on it. And I will show you the results in a moment after I'm going to take my stamp with a design that I actually want to have on top. You can already see the markings that I did, so I know which side do I have to face towards me if I would be doing it on an envelope for the stamp to face the correct way. Here I'm melting my second color color that is going to be on top, which is the gorgeous yellow. Now I'm ready to pour my yellow wax. I'm just pouring it in the center, trying to maintain the circular shape I try to mentally calculate this comes with experience, is trying to calculate how much wax I would need for it to just barely feel the center part without it overflowing on the side. You can see I missed a spot but there's no problem. As you can see, it turned out pretty well as an option. I like to choose my metallic pens and go on top of the wax seal and just make it even more special and unique by adding more detail to it. First, I'm going to choose one of these colors. Let's go with the golden one. Here you can see the tip and the color. I have to tell you guys, from my experience, some of these metallic pants are going to be more easy to be seen and have higher pigmentation. Others not so much. You just have to try and see which one is more to your liking. I'm painting on top of the dragonfly, only here you can see it's quite shiny and pretty. I actually think I'm going to add another color afterwards. You could also leave it like this if you choose, but I'd just like to show you things you can do to it. All right. So now I'm going to take this pinkish color. I'm actually going to go over the edge here on the yellow part. I have to say the camera is not doing it. Justice in real life is actually prettier. You can see the metallic and shine and the color better. I really recommend to try it for yourself. It's really different. In real life, you actually can paint directly on the walk seal as well. Here I'm going to make two little hearts. I think I'm done with this one. It turned out pretty well. I'm happy with it. 3. Wax seal with flower arrangement: All right, next up we're going to make a really pretty one. It's one of my favorite techniques to use. I'm going to show you the collection of dried flowers that I've gathered over the time. You have to be careful when you do this. You have to always check from time to time if there's any bugs inside eating your flowers. It happened to me once. I have to advise you to be careful with this. Yeah, it can ruin your flowers because they start eating them. I'm, I'm going to pick the baby's breath. They're quite cute. And always go well on the seals from this flower, I'm going to rip out some petals and I'm going to use them together with the baby's breath. All right? So now I've picked my flowers. I'm going to trim them just a little bit. I'm going to set this aside since I'm quite lazy. I'm not going to clean my spoon, I'm just going to use the same color. This color is gorgeous, I think is one of the underrated colors. Whenever you ask people what's your favorite color, it's usually never orange or the yellow that I used previously. But I think they're gorgeous. I actually think all the colors are gorgeous. It's always difficult to pick just one. At least for me, I know the majority of people have no problem with picking their favorite color. All right. What do you want to do is dip the stem of the dried flower in your wax and then glue it to your surface where your wax seal is going to be. Another thing you can use. If for some reason you can't or you don't want to dip your stems into the wax, you can take a toothpick, dip it into the wax, and then join your dried flowers on the melted wax. Already on your surface of choice, it will still stick together quite securely, so you don't need to worry. Just choose your favorite method. Here I will show you. See it's not falling off the mat. Yeah, we're just going to continue now. I just need to melt the wax a little longer because as you know, it starts to harden, then I'm going to add the rest of the flower petals. I quite like working with the tweezers. It makes doing intricate work more easy. As you can see, I am dipping the petals in the wax and I am joining them together with the other ones. I'm just going to repeat this process while I glue everything together. As you can see, they're quite glued to the surface so you don't have to worry for them falling off or changing position while you are applying your wax. And the wax stamp, I'm measuring here to see where I would have to apply the wax. And here it goes. Just try to apply the wax as you normally would. Try to imagine the stems are not there. And just place your wax stamp as usual. You need to keep it there a little bit pressing I would say in the beginning, since the stems make it a little bit more difficult for the stemp to remain on its own. But once you've held there for a little while, you can already let go and wait for the wax to harden the moment of truth. Let's see how it turned out. I think it's not quite ready. Let me check. All right, so this seems solid. Let's see. Okay, here we have it. I would call this a success. It looks very pretty. What do you think? I really love the flowers with a axial. Oh, you can see I've got here some wax on my gloves, but do not worry if you get them on your gloves or on your sleeves. Just wait for the wax to try. After that, you can remove it really easily just by peeling it off, Just as I'm demonstrating here. You catch it on one side and you just peel it off. There you go. Quite easy, you can easily remove everything. 4. Simple floral wax seal: Continuing with the flower series. Next up I'm going to use this cautious shade of violet. Violet together with this yellow shade. Again, too lazy to clean the spoon, so I'm just going to add more wax in order to melt it. First up, we're going to use the same clean stamp, meaning it has no design on it, is just the circle. As usual. I'm going to speed up the wax melting part. Our wax is melted now. I think it's ready for the stamp, so I'm just going to pour it on the T. Next up, I was thinking I could just cut the pieces of F on the wax. Unfortunately, they didn't go like I imagine it in my head because they just spread everywhere. They just went everywhere. But the wax, I'm gathering the pieces here and putting them in the wax. I would suggest you cut up your flowers beforehand and then just sprinkle them or add them carefully on top of your wax. I'm just placing my stamp as usual as I do when I don't have any flowers on it. But since I have the flowers on it, the edge is not quite regular. I think the color combination is stunning. In the case of this stamp, I chose to place the flower carefully in the middle and then stamp it. We're going to do the same with another flower. I think this one here is a good pick. It matches roughly the size of our stamp. We're going to create another one. Let's see how this one turns out. Our wax is ready, we're pouring it on the silicon mat. Afterwards, you want to grab your flower and place it directly in the middle of your wax. And then gently letting your stamp fall on the wax and the flower you want to place it in the middle. Trying to apply the same pressure on all sides as you can see here, I wasn't quite as successful. There's a side missing. Didn't have to worry, we could actually fix this. What we're going to do first is we're going to add more wax to the edge of the wax seal. As you see, I'm melting some more wax and then I'm just pouring it around, creating a new edge. If the edge turned out to be bigger than you intended, there is no problem at all. Because what we're going to do next is we are going to cut that side of the edge that you think it's too big, This one right here. After that, you want to take your lighter or your candle and bring your wax seal close to the flame. Not too close, just a little. And you will see that the wax is starting to melt, creating an even edge. Here we have it. Here is the result. I think both of them turned out quite cute. 5. Beaded wax seal : All right, so I cleaned the spoons and we're going to try out some new colors for this wax seal. Let's go with the metallic wax. I'm going to pick some of the dark red ones, dark red stars. I'm just going to add them to my spoon. I know I say it a lot, but this color is gorgeous. There's so pretty all. Oh, oops, that one flew. All right. It's in the candle. It leaves there now. So let's see, We're going to melt this wax. I'm going to speed up the process for you, for the embellishments. We can choose between these pearl like bits or the diamond bits. I chose the pearl bits. So I'm just going to set them aside. Prepare in advance, so afterwards I can just glue them pretty quickly to my wax seal. I'm going to speed up the wax melting process. Here we have it this color, as I mentioned, gorgeous. I tried to make a marble effect here. I'm just swirling it with a toothpick. I'm going to continue. I added two different colors for the marble effect. Here is the result. We're going to pour it on the mat and grab our stamp of choice. Then quickly take your embellishment bits and place them on the melted wax. They stick as if they were glued. Now, the tricky part here is if you're not fast enough, they're not going to stick to your wax. As you can see, it looks as if it's going well, but actually some of them come undone and we have to glue them again. They said you really need to be quick when doing this. Here it is, the moment of truth. Let's see how it turned out. Everything is dry. That means the stamp is ready. I'm just trying to disconnect. It has already said some of it came undone. I'm just going to get this bit back. He doesn't want to come out. What you want to do is you want to melt your wax again. Afterwards, you want to take some melted wax. I'm putting some melted wax directly on the stamp. And then I'm gluing the pearl again, I'm getting some melted wax. I'm putting this melted wax on my wax stamp. I'm putting the melted wax on the wax stamp and joining my pearl bit. Finally we have it. Here it is, and it's gorgeous. This color combination is simply beautiful. What are your thoughts? Do you like how it turned out? 6. Enhanced detail wax seal : For another strategy, we're going to use this fern stamp. What we're going to do is two colors as well. First we're going to create the imprint of the fern. I'm choosing the red color for it afterwards. On the outside, I prefer the lighter green. I think it goes really well with this red. All right. So we need to make the fern first. I'm pouring the wax for the form of the fern and I'm just placing my stamp on the wax. Afterwards, we're going to cut out the fern, place it back in the wax stamp, and then stamp it together on the green wax. For this part, we need an exact knife. Please be very careful. These are really sharp. I would not want you guys to get hurt in the process of creating this beautiful wax. I'm just going to trim the edges, respecting the form of the fern as much as I can. Here it is. The result quite cute by itself as well, so you can use it on its own. Do not forget to place the cap on your exact knife so you don't get accidentally hurt. We're going to get the fern back into the stamp. Sometimes this part is quite tricky because the wax does not want to stay in the stamp, but try to make little pressure on it and somehow keep it in there. Now I'm going to melt my green wax, which is going to be the base of this wax seal here it is, the color absolutely stunning. I love these metallic colors. They're so beautiful. All right, so we're ready. I'm trying to measure the size of the stamp, that's why I'm holding it side by side. I've placed my wax on top. I'm going to very carefully place my stamp in order for the firm not to come out of it in the process. Let's see if it's ready. All right. It looks like it's hardened, so we're going to try to get it out. Here it is. Wow, this turned out so pretty, even better than I was imagining. Let's get them all together. Here we have the collection of wax seals that we made today. I'm going to arrange them so you can see them all better next to each other. Here they are. I would really like to know which one is your favorite and what technique is your favorite. Let me know. 7. Class project: For this class project, I would like to invite you to combine several of these techniques and create your own masterpiece. I invite you to post your results and ideas, as well as any thoughts that you have on the subject. I hope you had fun with the course and I'll see you next time.