I’m heat­ing up the mini-​crockpot today. It’s time to get the cre­ative wax juices flow­ing or some such ridicu­lous­ness. My cur­rent beeswax is yellow’d and needs to be used up so I can reload the pot. It’s too expen­sive to waste. Work­ing with wax is phe­nom­e­nal. My biggest prob­lems arise with quan­tity. With get­ting car­ried away and cov­er­ing every­thing with beeswax.

Hints for beeswax use:

Get a mini-​crockpot, the type used for choco­late or desserts.
Use either nat­ural or clear beeswax but be aware of the dif­fer­ence.
If you’re using wax to “attach” an object, put a bit of PVA glue on the object first, to secure it, then faux-​attach it with beeswax. (Many a lovely piece fell apart before this no-​duh moment.)
Tis­sue paper, as a first layer, over a stretched can­vas = suc­cess. Most of the time, I use sewing pat­tern tis­sues because the lines and arrows, the instruc­tions, cre­ate fab­u­lous start­ing points.
Start with a very thin layer, I tend to get over-​zealous in my application.

Wow, that sounds lame — them there words up there — you’d best try some of the pro-​fesh-​uhn-​ahl advice to really do it up right.

The point of this shmerzazz — beeswax works to secure items and to enhance the piece. It’s fun. Try it …

oh wait, art fun? Ahhhh, to triv­i­al­ize the process, to com­mend those who laugh whilst cre­at­ing — that is so very NOT artis­tic of me. In order to truly sac­ri­fice as an artist

to truly CREATE

ART

one must suffer.

So, before begin­ning your beeswax assem­blage or col­lage piece, dip you baby toe into the caul­dron of melted wax. SUFFER DAMMIT.

Then cre­ate.

The sure path to fame and fortune.

Do not smile. Chor­tles are pun­ish­able by fine and/​or imprisonment.

Carry on.

c