Point 925

A Work In Progress– wax carving, part 1

Look–I remembered that I have a blog! Poor thing, it’s been so long since I posted anything that I had to shovel out the cobwebs and chase the spiders out with my torch before I could get in here to write!

My motivation for this next set of posts is Sandy Paws 2010. After getting into the event in 2005, I managed to miss the vendor sign-up reminder e-mail in 2006 because I was up to my ears in the first round of Braille charms for Seedlings Braille Books for Children. It took four years before a vendor slot finally opened up again! I’m really excited to be going to Jekyll Island next month. I’m jonesin’ for some sunshine and warm weather–I hope the weather cooperates!

In the meantime, I need to come up with some new cast charm/pendant designs for my greyhound line for 2010. A lot of what I’m currently selling are stock designs that I did not create. Someone else carved the originals. I simply bought wax copies of them from jewelry wax companies and cast them, then made a mold of a casting so I could continue to reproduce them. The rest of my greyhounds are reproductions of antique charms or antique buttons. I’ve only got a few things in my line that I created myself, and I’m not too pleased with most of those. They’re just not quite right in one way or another.

I’m not the best wax carver around. I took a week-long class with wax carving guru Kate Wolf several years ago, but what I learned didn’t all sink in right away. I can learn everything there is to know about how to do something, but sometimes it takes years before my hands and my abilities catch up with my “book learnin’”.

And I never have been able to draw, which makes it that much harder to make new designs. But a couple days ago a miracle happened. I sat down with a sketch pad and some photos of Allegra, my beloved black brindle bitch who was taken too young by kidney disease almost 3 years ago. I came up with some things I think might work. You can tell from the progression in detail which one was first and which was last. I’m completely surprised at how much they actually look like greyhounds!  Well, #2 looks like a whippet to me, but at least it’s recognizable as a sighthound.

Despite my limited skills, I’m going to give carving a new greyhound design a try. It’ll be interesting to see how much more of my learning has “sunk in” since I last tried carving anything from scratch.

I apologize for the ugly watermarks on the pictures. But I’m continually amazed at what people think belongs to them just because they saw it on the internet.
Those of you who like to “borrow” other people’s photos, art and designs (you know who you are) — those watermarks are protecting you from me.  Don’t do it, don’t even think about it–not here, and not anywhere else either. Everything on the ‘net is automatically protected and copyrighted at the time it is posted by its rightful owner. Just because you can see it does not mean you can use it for your own purposes. Sorry, that’s a soapbox I just can’t avoid climbing on…

Anyway, here’s my Allegra:

And here are my sketches:

The plan as it started was to design a charm that could be used on a European-style charm bracelet (Pandora, Trollbeads, Chamilia, etc.)–a 3-d charm with a large hole for a thick chain to go through the middle. I was aiming for something “sort of round”, about 3/4″ (20mm) across, a design (preferably the same) on both sides, and thick enough to take a 3/16″ (4.5mm) hole from edge to edge.

I started by scanning my sketches and adjusting their sizes to fit the above plan. (one of the middle sized ones on the sheet may become a larger flat pendant–the biggest one was an oops).  Using the computer, I reversed the design that was to be the back of each piece. I cut out one pair of designs and covered the backs of them with graphite from a soft pencil.

Then I got out some slices of pre-cut carving wax and coated the flat sides with a little bit of soap. before painting them China White watercolor paint. The soap breaks the surface tension of the wax, allowing the paint to spread instead of beading up. When dry, the paint provides a way to mark the design on the wax clearly. I folded the paper design in half carefully, making sure the two designs lined up. I wrapped it around the wax being careful to keep the fold line in the middle of the wax thickness. Using a ball-ended scribe I traced over the lines of the design, leaving graphite on the white paint on the wax. When I had all the lines traced on both sides, then I used a sharp wax carving tool to scratch the lines through the paint and the surface of the wax.

It was at this point that I discovered that in my excitement to begin, I’d picked up the wrong piece of wax when I started.
It’s not thick enough to accept the necessary 3/16″ hole.