Tutorial - Personal Wax Seal

My first proper tutorial!
Here for your creative pleasure, a little thing I wrote about how to create your own wax seal using things you can easily find, or source cheaply.

For so many years, I had wanted my own personal wax seal with which to close my missives. As with such things however, the ones I could find about the place were either ugly, generic, soulless, or brain-shatteringly expensive. And besides, I wanted to design my own.
So that’s what I did.
I had visions of cast silver with perhaps an ebony handle from the block I was gifted years ago (I will find a use for that little treasure one day). But I can’t smith in silver, and it’s not exactly something I can spend a lot of money on at the moment. So, time to think creatively.
And this is what I’ve come up with - a hand-carved soapstone seal with a King Billy pine handle. It took me no time at all - an evening to carve the seal and a morning for the handle and finishing - and it was dead easy. Everything I used can be easily found or sourced and won’t cost an arm or even a leg, if you’d like to give it a go.

…
Tools



My materials:
A design, drawn out first and then mirrored.
A small block of soapstone. I used a little carving that my local Asian grocer had for 50cents each. It already had a flat bottom and was roughly the right size and shape.
Wood for a handle, I used a small block of King Billy pine, which is endemic to my island home. You could use whatever you find laying about.
Wood carving tools, I used a small straight detail knife and a small scorp for hollowing the handle.
Epoxy glue
Sandpaper, several grades
Danish oil, for finishing
Polymer modeling clay, for testing the carved design

And because I lack fine carving tools with which to work the soapstone:
A fat tapestry needle
A dress-makers pin with the flat top end stuck into a split stick (for a handle).

First you’ll obviously need to work out your design. Once you’ve got something you like, you’ll need to mirror-image it in order to get a right-way-up impression when you use your stamp. I find the easiest way to do this is to draw your final design in soft pencil, fold the paper in half to one side of the drawing, and rub the back of it with a spoon (or something smooth and vaguely roundish). Now you have a visual reference for copying your design backwards onto your stone.

Soapstone is incredibly easy to carve, and you could probably carve the whole thing - handle and all - in one piece if you wanted to. I really wanted a wooden handle, so I first set about roughing out a shape for my stone that would end up set into the wood.

To start off the seal carving, I found it best to very lightly scratch it into the surface, then slowly work a layer at a time, adding a bit more pressure each round.
The round-tipped tapestry needle was very useful for creating a deep line with a soft round bottom to it - great for uniform-width lines or text. Fine detail can be worked in with the pin.
It’s also fairly easy to slip and end up with a line somewhere you don’t want one. Even the finest of lines will show up on your finished wax impression, but if you slip and leave a mark, it can be sanded out carefully without any troubles.
To test the design as you go, you can warm some clay in your fingers until it is quite soft, and use that to make an impression.

With the design finished and carved into the stone, it’s just a matter of making your handle and setting it in(if you wanted a separate one). With mine, I had carved a flat round blob on the back of my stone that would set into the wood, so I carved out a space for it to fit. This helped make it stronger.
The wood was given a good sanding with 3 or 4 grades of fine paper to make it silky smooth, the stone epoxyed in, and the handle given an oil once it had all set.
You could certainly use all sorts of things for a handle aside from carved wood - you could sculpt something with a polymer clay, for example.

In any case, this is a really easy and cheap way to create something personal, beautiful and functional. I’ve certainly gotten a lot of use out of mine already, and I’ve even used it to embellish parts of the website

Also, please remember that your seal is made from stone. And SOFT stone, so it will not take being beaten about. Take care of it and it will last a long time
Use a proper sealing wax, such as the gorgeous stuff from
Atelier Gargoyle. They also have an excellent page. about how to use your seal and wax properly.


This article is also featured on my soon-to-be-finished blog.

It also goes without saying (you'd think) that this article is mine, and if you steal it or reproduce it in any way I have the will and the means to hunt you down and poke you to death. Then i'll reanimate you, state my ownership and make sure you regret it
Love!
-Kel Flowers - kelfae.com




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If you do try this, please leave me a comment with a link to your picture so I can share it below. Then everyone can see what other people have done with it
It'd also be fair to stick a link in your deviation to back here

Deviants who have used my tute and let me know:
~lalalura [link]
~Nimtai [link]

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