Friday, April 01, 2011

Retro Crafting Friday: Sculptured Wax Flowers

April showers bring waxed flowers? Happy April everyone. We are hoping here in Chicagoland that temperatures rise into the 50's this month but I'll be happy with the absence of snow myself. This 1972 gem:  Sculptured Wax Flowers the easy way with Fiesta Dippy reminded me of things I used to make in girl scouts. The macrame plan hanger, for example. 
The wax flowers process does not seem easy to me. Eight steps are described in the opening pages of this book: 
Step One:  Select and prepare wax, add dye, if desired.
Step Two: Melt wax.
Step Three: Soak Molds in Water (You have to purchase at least 3-4 molds for each pattern in this book. There are even holiday versions.)
Step Four: Dipping the molds into Dippy Wax.
Step Five: Dipping the molds into water.
Step Six:  Removing the Petal from Dippy Mold.
Step Seven:  Attaching the flowers to Candle.
Step Eight:  Shaping flowers or petals.
This seems elaborate and pretty hard to do. The lovely girl on the cover seems to be having fun, though. I have received beautiful little dough flowers as gifts, though, and candle crafting is still alive and well. This just seems to require more patience that I likely posses. Also the candle with the mushrooms (yellow, in front of picture) is a little strange.
Anyone do this type of crafting?

1 comment:

beadbuddy said...

I have the kit that came with this book. You need the wax that they made for it and there are special molds that they made that look like mushrooms. You dip the mold in hot wax and peel off a petal. Then use drop of hot wax to assemble the petals into a flower on the outside of a candle. They don't make these any more.