That said I have been busy, last week I ran a half marathon and yesterday saw our first hockey game of the season. Even so, rather than retreat for my customary Sunday afternoon nap today, I decided to follow up on an idea developed from an article on 3D printers. While the modern printers in the article use plastic I had a vague recollection of older models that used wax. This reminded me of the lost wax castings I did at university and by proxy the other work I did with wax during my art foundation year.
I used to do a lot of work with wax, some of it very successful. It got me thinking about the flowers I had made and how wax would change them. I even toyed with the idea of whether they could be cast themselves if coated in wax. So, with it being a particularly cold and rainy afternoon I decided to have a little play.
The observant among you will notice I've snuck some tissue paper flowers in. Tissue paper and wax work SO well together so I couldn't resist. However I'm equally pleased with my recycled book flowers, I tried to use a variety of techniques so each is slightly different although they are all made from just the original paper flower and wax, nothing else. The differences are due to the temperature of the wax, the way it is applied and the thickness of the layering.
Creating these flowers took less than a couple of hours and was a lot of fun. If you want to have a go I would suggest using a bain marie, such as you would melt chocolate in, to melt the wax. Be careful not to heat the wax to much as it has a flash point, I kept taking it off the heat, letting it cool and then reheating once it got to thick. Apart from that all you need is some paint brushes and bulldog clips to hold the "stem of the flower" while the wax hardens. Enjoy.
No comments:
Post a Comment