Faux Wax Seals

What a fantastic weekend for accomplishing wedding things! (but not in the craft room, which is still trying to dry out and smells all musty).

Also, a fantastic weekend for breaking things. I'm such a butterfingers: 1 wine bottle, 1 plate, and then I forgot about the wine bottle and went around barefoot - yep, that was the smallest glass shard I never saw. I added really realistic blood to the craftroom. Yay! (that last part was dripping with sarcasm - it's hard to hear over the internet *smile*).

Anyway, projects started on Saturday:

• Bridesmaid gift boxes - roughly 25% complete
• Halloween pennant banner - DONE LIKE A TURKEY
• Invitation faux-wax seal tests - 65 in-progress, 9 (the tests) done, out of a total 200 needed
• stair decoration - FINITO
  

w00t!

For now, I'll tell you about the seals. 'Cause I'm pleased with the way they are going to look.

I guess everyone knows that you can buy hot glue that is kind of like wax? And use it instead of real wax seals? Well, anyway - you can. But it's not in my local craft store and I didn't want to order it, so here's a fairly easy way to DIY your own faux wax letter seals in the color of your choosing. Mine are silver (the ones below haven't be affixed to anything):

You need:

• Hot glue gun
• Hot glue refills
• a wax seal stamp
  
• a bowl of ice or an ice pack
  
• a cotton ball or rag soaked in a little bit of olive oil
• a rag
• a sheet of wax paper
• spray paint - color of your choice
  

You will:

1. Cool the stamper in the ice - get that metal cold!
2. Put a spot of hot glue on the wax paper (it doesn't take much, definitely not as much as you think - play around with this) - let sit 10-15 seconds
   
3. rub some olive oil on the stamper
4. stamp as you would do with wax - the colder the stamper is the less time you'll have to leave it in the glue, but 5-10 seconds is pretty safe.

All these steps can be found in better detail here. To get the wax seals in your dream color choice - peel them off the wax paper (they likely won't come off clean), wipe them down to get olive oil off (if you don't they may never dry), go somewhere well ventilated, and spray paint them. I'm using just good ol' cheapy silver spray paint, but there are plastic paints that would probably work much better. I'm just doing with what I have around the house.

Once they are dry, affix them with a little extra dab of hot glue. Yay! Imitation wax seals.

Want your own custom stamper for a party? Here's a good how-to.