Wax and Wings

Happy first day of June! What is happening to 2019, I mean it feels like it was Christmas just a few days ago. June does bring a few positives, cooler stay inside and craft weather (well, in Australia), end of financial year sales (again in Australia) and one other thing…. Oh, yeah. A new Stampin’ Up! Annual Catalogue. Just a few days until we can all order on June 4th and I can’t wait, my bank account may feel differently.

Before we can welcome all the goodness that Stampin’ Up! have coming, we need to farewell some current favourites from the catalogue. Some I agree needed to leave like Lovely As a Tree stamp set and than items like Glossy Paper has me shaking my head! This stuff is good and hard to find. Don’t even get me started on all the fun techniques you can do with it. Like faux linen which I showed HERE or that time I created a pretty amazing gold marbled effect HERE.

The card I am sharing today is callled wax paper resist technique which uses Glossy White Cardstock with waxed paper, I am talking the American waxed paper not the wax paper that you can buy in Australian supermarkets. I found some on ebay from an Australian seller, I warn you the seller was very slow in shipping but you can see the item HERE and I have no connection with them besides buying the wax paper.

What you do is emboss the wax paper through an embossing folder, I used Tin Tile from Stampin’ Up!. Place the two pieces of Glossy White Cardstock with the gloss facing the waxed paper, so you have a sandwich of gloss paper, embossed wax paper and a second piece of gloss. Using a dry (meaning no water) iron on a low-ish heat press over the paper sandwich. The longer the heat from the iron is on a section the more wax will melt, the will mean the ink will resist that section.

Peel the layers of papers apart, the wax paper has done its job and you can say goodbye to that. The two layers of gloss will have a positive and negative design,  now is the time things get exciting as we start adding colour. I took the option of sponging ink over the surface with a sponge but you could go direct with the ink pad or brayer colour, and it does not have to be just one colour!   This is an oldie technique and I could not find the source that I first leant about it, I did find this video that was pretty straight to the point.

I always say there are no mistakes, just room for creative opportunities. If you notice on my card I have a very white section on the right bottom corner as I  did leave the iron there a little too long and you know what, I played around with three or four sets the one I liked the most was this over melted imperfect layer. I embossed the layer with the Subtle Embossing Folder which you can see the outcome below. How good does it look?

I talked so much about the background technique, I did not mention the main image. The Butterfly was white heat embossed on vellum and the same thing for the butterflies inside the card which is pictured below. I might be a fan of fussy cutting but I am happy that there is a punch for the Butterfly Gala stamp set.  The sweet Blossoms Elements are not normally that colour, they come in So Saffon, Petal Pink and Calypso Coral which was not going to work so I painted them to this sage colour.

Thank you for visiting, the Stampin’ Up! items I have used are listed below. Simply click on the item and be taken to my online store or click here to see the retiring items.

Product List