jaeleslie

I think I mentioned Chris and Marcia came over for papermaking last week. I have had this piece of blue and green handmade paper on my desk with some relief texture on it (from a plastic doily laid in while it was pressed) and was thinking about how I could maybe put some gilding on the high spots, besides the dark blue lettering I did, it needed a little something more. And Chris made this interesting remark about how she had read somewhere about using wax as a gilding adhesive.

So what kind of wax do I have on hand? I thought of trying crayons although they seem a bit too dry. Mr S used all my canning paraffin (for sealing tree pruning wounds) and what he has left is full of dirt. No beeswax on hand. But I have this wax for the layout waxer that I hardly use anymore, and bigger (newer, whiter) blocks of wax from a friend whose agency went from industrial-strength waxer to all DTP. Not being one to make a lot of tests (the work is the test!) I tried it on my latest little book, not melted but just the solid block rubbed over, and the metal leaf stuck and it looked pretty spiffy. Kind of rough, the application was not very even, but that fit in pretty well.

So I rubbed it on the handmade paper piece anyhow, laid on some wild composition gold, burnished it down a bit, scrubbed at the edges and low spots with a brush a bit. Got it just how I want it, so then I stopped! The bluegreen part of the metal actually matches the paper rather well, and there are kind of comet-like flames running through the piece of leaf I used. And there is a bit more embossing in the paper all round that, and blue-green sparkly bits in the paper too.

Now that I did it of course I have started worrying about the archival properties of the wax, as waxed layouts tend to dry out and fall apart after a few years in the files. This is not paper to paper, tho, and the weight of the schlagmetal is practically nothing. Ah well.

Something simple, I said to myself. Yeah, sure. I said to myself, back to gouache, no more of this struggling with acrylic and waterproof inks and weird mixed media surfaces, I said to myself. Right.

Edit: okay, okay. Here is where you can see what I'm talking about. As usual the gilding doesn't scan very well at all, which is why I was yammering on about it. http://www.fotolog.net/maryread/