The Special Gift – Hand Made Cards!…

Have you ever thought about making your own cards? If you ever received any hand made cards yourself, you will appreciate that it is a nice, personal gesture. Therefore join me by getting artistic and learning how to make wax resist cards.

So okay, what are the basic requirements needed for this? A No 6 brush, some silver or gold paint, scissors, 2 H pencil, a glue stick like Pritt, as an example, watercolour paints, childrens wax crayons and some pieces of A5 card.

You need a card that the wax crayons will work on. Ideally one with a surface that appears chalky, but also has a slight texture to it. Naturally, if it is stiff, the result will be better as you need to be able to fold it in half.

I have known, in the past, that printers will sometimes sell A3 and cut it down to A5 for you. This is a good, cheap way of doing it, but you can often buy blank greeting cards from craft shops.

So, cut a piece of A5 into two halves widthways. In the centre, draw your image. Make your images clear so that it is possible to cut it out. Choose something where you can cut out segments. Make sure these are well outlined for you to cut them out, like a stencil in fact.

Grab the scissors and cut round your stencils. If you have now obtained all your cut out pieces, stick these to your remaining piece of card. You should have now a picture, which is raised. So, fold widthways a piece of your A5 card in half to form your card and then you can position your picture, that is already glued, into the centre of this.

So, you are all set, you have a template. You now should go over your card surface by rubbing it with your crayons. Any shapes, that are in fact, raised, will catch the colour of your image beneath. It is imperative while you work that you keep the template and card really still. If you move at all, you could have disastrous results.

It is now possible to choose another crayon and using the side of it, rub all over the front of your card, this, in turn, will reveal the colours underneath. You can make your colours stronger by simply applying more pressure.

Varying impressions will be made according to the amount of pressure you have applied with different crayons. Now you need to paint with a No 6 brush, with a fairly watered down water colour mix. It is to be recommended that you add a border of silver or gold paint round your work, like a square or a circle, so that you can then wash over your other work and fill in spaces.

Be careful too, not to paint too much on your crayoned image. You need the paint to be watered down to give you fairly transparent colours.