Tastes of Culture

Why not try making your own cards? My friends love it when they receive my home made cards. So lets get to work on making wax resist cards. Yes, I mean it, get creative!

First of all, what will you need? A selection of items, namely some gold or silver ink, scissors, 2H pencil, glue stick, something like Pritt for instance, childrens wax crayons, watercolour paints, some pieces of card which are of A5 size and a brush No 6.

You need a card that the wax crayons will work on. Ideally one with a surface that appears chalky, but also has a slight texture to it. Naturally, if it is stiff, the result will be better as you need to be able to fold it in half.

As for the card, you could try going to a printer to buy the A3, sometimes they will sell it to you and possibly cut it to A5 size for you. This can work out quite cheaply. However, depending on the area you live in, you may be able to actually buy some blank, ready made, cards.

Into action now! Take a piece of your A5 card and cut a piece into two halves widthways. You then need to draw your image in the centre. Any image you make needs to be clear, so that you are then able to cut it out. Your image needs to be something whereby you can cut out segments and they have to be outlined clearly to be possible to cut them out to give you a stencil.

Grab the scissors and cut round your stencils. If you have now obtained all your cut out pieces, stick these to your remaining piece of card. You should have now a picture, which is raised. So, fold widthways a piece of your A5 card in half to form your card and then you can position your picture, that is already glued, into the centre of this.

So, you are all set, you have a template. You now should go over your card surface by rubbing it with your crayons. Any shapes, that are in fact, raised, will catch the colour of your image beneath. It is imperative while you work that you keep the template and card really still. If you move at all, you could have disastrous results.

It is now possible to choose another crayon and using the side of it, rub all over the front of your card, this, in turn, will reveal the colours underneath. You can make your colours stronger by simply applying more pressure.

Varying impressions will be made according to the amount of pressure you have applied with different crayons. Now you need to paint with a No 6 brush, with a fairly watered down water colour mix. It is to be recommended that you add a border of silver or gold paint round your work, like a square or a circle, so that you can then wash over your other work and fill in spaces.

Whatever you do, don`t overdo the paint on your image, it needs to be watery so that you achieve fairly transparent colours.