Wax Seals

Merry Christmas with red/gold marbling

For my personal Christmas cards, I decided to apply a wax seal to the flap side of the envelope. I wanted something a little bit special for my cards this year. By applying the seal, I incurred the added 21 cent surcharge for special handling. Since the card and envelope is less than one ounce, the special handling makes the postage 70 cents. For my friends and family, I am OK with that.

Since I had several cards to send, I rotated three different stamps so they could cool down between envelopes. While one was cooling off, a different stamp was being used on the next envelope. All of the stamps came from Get Marked Etsy Store.

Since the envelopes were a light green, I wanted to play around with the red and gold sealing wax. I also wanted to  try a marbling effect on some of the seals. The three stamps are Merry Christmas, Joy and Christmas Bouquet.

Merry Christmas with gold only

Christmas Bouquet with red only

Joy with red and gold marbling

I think my favorite combination is the last example. Here the proportions are two-thirds red to one third gold. I like the deep color of the red with the gold highlights. The first example is equal parts red and gold. In the future, if I plan on using just one color, I will dip the stamp in a stamp pad to add color similar to the examples here.

I really do think it adds an eloquent touch to an envelope and it is special enough that people will appreciate the effort.

Conundrum

I am a little bit an at impasse. I will be participating in several swaps dealing with Christmas/Holiday cards. The cards that I plan on sending out would normally cost 49 cents to mail (which includes a surprise inside the envelope for the recipient). I want to add the wax seal on the envelope as a special touch. But it I do that, it increases the cost of the mailing to 70 cents. To make the mailing more special, I plan on using Forever holiday postage stamps. If I used the wax seals, I will have to wait for the special order of additional postage stamps to arrive and will have to use multiple stamps to obtain the postage needed. So the question is:

(1) do I not use the wax seal and send out with a regular Christmas postage stamp; or

(2) do I use the wax seal and use non-holiday postage stamps; or

(3) do I wait for the additional postage stamps to arrive, and use the wax seal and multiple holiday postage stamps?

NY Post Cards

Today's entry is a postcard swap that I did. The theme was sender's choice and I had some scraps of paper from a subway map that I had left over from a previous project. I glued the paper to a watercolor card that I had cut previously. I used a NYC stencil set have several manhole covers, bricks, and the letters NYC. I used a extra fine tip Sharlie in black. I filled in the bricks and letters to create some dimension. I used a yellow marker to highlight the letters of NYC. I then used my new NY wax seal to create the raised button on NYC manhole covers. I stamped the seal with gold pigment ink before pressing into navy blue wax.

For the reverse, I used alcohol inks to create a Tokyo manhole cover. The manhole system in Japan is world renown and the Japanese people take extreme pride in them. There are many special covers and many covers are designed specifically for the local market. There are an estimated 6000 manhole covers in the country of Japan. If you want to find out more and see pictures, please visit here.

To add interest to the reverse side, I found some amazing used NY postage stamps from my collection to tie the front and back together.

Here is the wax seal page for the new NY wax seal.

First Wax Seal

Here is another of my wax seals. This was the first one that I ordered. It is a custom order from Get Marked.  This is a double R in a overlapped script R. The wax is from a local store called Paper Presentation. Unknowingly, I purchased wax sticks for glue guns and they melted fine in a regular melting fashion.

Plain Seal

Seal with PearlEx powders

Seal with Gold Pigment Ink

Wax Seals--My latest obsession

It is my nephew's fault I got involved with wax seals. He is eight going on thirty. He wanted a Harry Potter themed birthday party. He told his parents that Uncle Russ needed to get involved with the preparations this year. I have always been enamored with wax seals but never really experimented with them. Years ago, I tried but I found them too messy and the seals broke too easily in the mail. Things have changed drastically over time and the process is much cleaner and less stressful. The above image is the sample page in my wax seal book. It is easy to take the book around to show clients how wax seals work.

The above image is the simple wax seal with no adornment.

The above image is the wax seal with silver highlights. The highlights are created with stamp pad pigment ink. Rub your finger across the stamp pad and then lightly rub the image on the seal.

The above image is the seal in relief with an inked background. This uses a pigment ink stamp pad as well. To accomplish this look, the brass seal is dipped onto the stamp pad and then placed in the melted wax.

The above image illustrates two techniques: highlights using PearlEx powders and wax seals with ribbon.

For my nephew's project, we used the gold background technique (next to last photo) on the outer envelope. Each "student"/guest will go to the  sorting hat to get assigned to a particular house. Once assigned, they will get a scroll of assignments . At the end of the party each student will graduate and get a diploma signed by the headmaster and sealed with a ribbon.