Thursday, February 18, 2010

Beeswax Questions

I've gotten several questions about beeswax in the last couple days and thought I'd share them with you....

Q - is this the same as encaustic wax?

A - No, encaustic was is a seperate art technique/medium. It is a mixture of beeswax, pigments and sometimes additional resins or mediums are added to the mix. This mixture is then used to create entire paintings.

Q - How much beeswax does it take for a collage?

A - Well, that's hard to say...I know, that's a cop out but seriously it all depends on the size of collage and the techniques you choose to incorporate into your collage. I am showing LOTS of techniques in this one collage. Much of the time you would use 2-3 of these techniques but other times you might like to use them all.

If you were creating a simply paper/ephemera collage with 1 or 2 dimensional embellishments I'd say one jar of Ranger beeswax pellets would create 3-4 ~ 8"x8" sized collages. Possibly more if you're not as messy as I am ;)

It really does go a long way since you can use your heat gun to submerge many layers of paper into one or two layers of wax.

Q - How hot is the wax? / Is it safe for kids?

A - Beeswax has a fairly low melt temperature. If you get a drop of wax on your skin it won't burn you say like grease or UTEE would. As far as children I would say as long as the kids understand that the melt pot is extremely hot and will burn them and under adult supervision they would be fine. It's a very forgiving material so if a mistake was made it's easily corrected... very kid friendly on that point.

Q - Can I mix colors into my wax?

A - YES! I haven't gotten that far but yes, you can mix all sorts of pigments into the beeswax to create some awesome effects :)

I think that's most of the questions for now...if I forgot anyone, please let me know and I'll be sure to post :)

2 comments:

  1. A friend sent me to your blog becuz she knows how much I LOVE beeswax. If you don't mind, I'd like to add to your answers:
    * encaustic is about 85% beeswax & 15% demar resin and you can make it yourself. it has a higher melting temp & is supposedly stronger and more permanent than beeswax
    * I have done workshops with kids using beeswax - little kids love it. I don't use the meltpot becuz it's so hot, I use an itty bitty crock pot
    I can't wait to go read the rest of your posts ~ Sherry

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  2. So i want to send a beeswax collage to my friends, but i'll have to send it through the mail. And being college kids and everything we lack proper cooling in the house AKA no air conditioning! Would a beeswax collage ever melt?

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Thanks for your thoughts and comments!