Queen Bee - Playing with Beeswax

Merry Christmas to you and yours!  I hope you had a wonderful celebration with family and loved ones.  Ours was delightful, wrapping up today with one last visit to a grandparent's house. 

I had hoped there would be time for blogging before all the festivities began but I decided I wanted to leave my last post up for awhile instead.  Forever in my heart those babies and families will be.

Now its time to share a beeswax project! Starting with this sneak:

Since this picture went up on my blog in August of 2011 it has been my most popular post!!!  I must say, it is quite the sneak, right?  All sorts of texture goodness oozing everywhere.  It was created for the Rubbernecker stamp event at Scrapbook News and Review.  I can't even tell you how many projects I made for these events and for this magazine over the years I've yet to share!  Thanks to Ashli (soapHOUSEmama) of the PurpleMailbox I'll be making a very valiant effort to do this - I mean its all stuff I'm really pretty proud of - so thank you Ashli for reminding me of lost treasures!

Isn't this stamp just fab-u-lous??!  It actually wasn't even one of the ones up for grabs for the event!  The kind owners at Rubbernecker heard of my heritage and love of these stamps through the grapevine  and said by all means I could go ahead and use them - so cool!

 As I was trying to decide on some last minute ways to gift some foodie presents tins came to mind - but one cannot give just plain ol' tins especially when one is crafty right?  So as I looked around my space - this lovely lady gazed back at me - altered tins it would be - and that meant sharing this project finally for you!  

The stamped image was colored with some Lindy's Stamp Gang pigment powders - also courtesy of the SNR events and since I stamped the image on kraft cardstock I didn't have to worry about the skin tone color.

This all started on a band aid tin.  I wrapped it up in Echo Park paper and then began adding my beeswax.  In between layers the stamp was added, along with the bee sticker, a doily, and a border sticker (Echo Park) - these will be more visible in the last pictures to come. The last layer of wax was added along with the crown.

I wanted the honeycomb pattern to pop back out, it had disappeared quite a bit once covered in wax, so I grabbed some carving tools and replicated the pattern by carefully taking away some wax while it moderately warm. Next came a nice thick layer of colored tar gel - one of my very favorite mediums to play with!  Its not very user friendly at first, maybe even intimidating - there is a steep learning curve but once you get the hang of it - fun stuff I tell ya'!!  I drizzled to my heart's content and then embedded some beads into it as well.

*On a side note to tar gel - I wrote an entire series devoted to this and string gel (a similar medium) and shall share installments coming up to teach you - my wonderful readers - the joys of this medium if there is interest so let me know

In hindsight I wish I would have covered the top of this tin with paper - or more beeswax.  There is a portion of my being that likes the remnants of what the tin was before peeking through and portion of it that doesn't - such is life.  Overall this is hands down a favorite project of mine eva'!!  It incorporates all things I love in one piece and used up an old tin I'd been hanging on to for ages.

Thanks for stopping by - I'll be back again soon with a new page and sketch to share from Skissedilla!

Take good care - Scarlett