Wax Seal

I stumbled upon this great tutorial for making your own wax seal a while ago and have been meaning to try it myself.  Wax seals are sweet, and not that hard to make.  All you really need is a dowel and carving tools.  

I used a 3/4" dowel, and sketched my design on the end after sanding it super flat.  In the tutorial, they use a wood burner to engrave their design, but I wanted a deeper, cleaner impression so I opted to carve out my design.  All I had in my apartment was an Exacto knife, so this step was pretty annoying/time consuming.  I strongly suggest picking a more simple design.

Once you're happy with your carving, you need to seal the wood so wax can't  get trapped in any of the nooks and crannies.  For this part you can use wood stain, polyurethane, resin--basically anything that will seal the wood off from moisture, etc.

1.  Sketch                      2.  Carve out                          3.  Seal

Once you let the sealed end cure, you're ready for the fun part.  You will need sealing wax, which seems like it would be difficult to find, but you can actually get it at Michaels in the wedding section.  It comes in a few colors and is pretty cheap.  They are just little sticks of wax that have a wick in the center.  All you do is light the wick and let the wax drip in one spot over your envelope until you have a pool about the same diameter as your dowel.

Now let the wax cool for about 15 seconds and while you're waiting, dip the end of your dowel in some oil to prevent it from sticking to the wax.  Blot most of the oil on a paper towel, and then press your seal firmly into the wax and let it sit while the wax dries fully.  Once the wax is cold again, wiggle your dowel gently until it parts from the seal.  Hurrah.

                                     

                                     

Gold looks purty.