That Sounds Like a Dare!

Some friends and I are planning to play around with wax collage/encaustics soon. Someone mentioned we shouldn't use acrylic paints with wax. Why, I wondered? It seems like it might have a cool reaction. Well, because it's just not done. Hmmmm.....sounded like a challenge to me. How do I know if I haven't tried it? You know, I almost named my blog 'I Wonder What Would Happen If....?'

I hurried out to my studio to see what would happen. If it was a total bust, at least I could say I tried. I grabbed a piece of cardstock and glued down the nearest scraps of paper available. I added a beautiful image that I got here. I used my heat gun (I'm pretty sure that's frowned upon too) and melted some beeswax over the whole thing. When it was cool, I broke out my new Adirondack Dabber and started dabbing. While it was wet I hit it with the heat gun again and it did what I thought it might. It reacted with the wax and started breaking into chunks and was suspended in the wax. VERY cool!

I just found this fantastic quote:

"Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun."
- Mary Lou Cook

I think I'll make that my tagline!

Created Byhand Challenge - French

Ok, something a bit more conventional for this week's Created Byhand French theme. This time I did use more scraps, but no oversized pointing hands or anything, lol!

I built this collage on top of a piece of torn cardboard. Most of the paper elements are held in place with beeswax. I wasn't sure what would happen when I put the beeswax over the image of the woman, but I like what it did. Makes her look a bit ghostly.

Stamps are all from the April in Paris plate by Oxford Impressions. Click on image to better see the detail - it looks so cool in real life!