Memory Sealed in Wax

Since doing a beeswax collage workshop with the lovely Claudine Hellmuth a few months ago (click HERE for those details) I've been meaning to try another one at home.  But you know how that goes.  Other projects, deadlines, and that pesky thing called life got in the way.  The other day I glanced at the calendar and thought, "holy crap, it's almost Mother's Day!"

What to send to mom this year?  It was just her birthday a while ago and the big box of Godiva dark chocolates were a hit, but too soon to send another.  How about making something?  What a radical idea.  I make things almost every day.  Why don't I send something to her that came from my hands as well as my heart?  DUH!  Well, that thought collided with the beeswax thought, and this little 5x7 canvas was the result:

The photo is of my parents, taken shortly after they married.  The gorgeous frame was cut with a nestabilities die from Tim's new glasseine paper.  The canvas itself was first sprayed with colorwash and perfect pearls mists, then I just started adding stenciling with paints, bits of paper, including color saturated paper towels, and more layers of spraying.

It was at that point that I began adding the beeswax, which is all I used to attach the photo, the frame, the papers, the flower, ticket and butterfly.   And I was happy to discover that even rub-ons can be adhered to a waxy surface and then covered with more wax without any damage to the rub-on.

Maybe not quite as good as a box of Godiva, but I think mom will like it.