so I’ve been obsessed with wax seals lately…
a rant about the Current Thing I Love ✨
Note: Not affiliated with any of the links provided below, just wanted to provide visual examples because there aren’t many stock photos available for all the different kinds of wax seals. Etsy and Pinterest and Instagram have been my go-to sources for learning more about these types!
I’ve been obsessed with wax seals lately. I recently dove into the world of Pinterest, calming in visuals and algorithmically suggesting more beautiful things based on the things I already like.
That’s one kind of algorithm I actually do like.
Two things I’ve learned in this journey down the wax seal rabbit hole:
- Apparently when you pin a lot of wax seals, Pinterest will think you’re having a wedding soon and push wedding invitations and wedding dresses to you. I am not looking for a wedding. I am simply looking for more reasons other than weddings to send outrageously beautiful wax-sealed stationery to people for something as ordinary as a Zoom hangout.
- There are so many KINDS of wax seals!
The second one was a shocker to me. My imagination of wax seals involves old-timey TV shows where you have a stick and you melt the wax stick over a candle before stamping it for sealing. But there are so many other types of wax seals offered now?
Pre-made seals: They are perfectly made wax seals that you can peel off like a sticker and stick onto an envelope. These must be perfect for wedding invitations where you want to quickly assemble numerous invitations with the same quality of sealing, with a perfectly circular wax seal formed every time. To me though, it does seem a bit artificial. In a way, imperfect wax seals speak to me with their beauty more.
Wax beads: I discovered these through hollystwpoetry, a small business owner, poet and artist who creates typewritten poems and seals them with gorgeous wax seals. In her shared Tik Tok and Twitter videos, you can see that she chooses a few wax beads of different colours, heats them in a spoon to create a semi-mixed texture and then uses that melted wax to create fluid-art-like patterns in the seals.
GLUE GUN WAX STICKS: So, this one is the one that tested the corners of the mind the most. Instead of having to light a candle or use a lighter to melt the wax, you can buy sticks of wax seal and place them into a glue gun. This also gives a lot more control over where you’re pouring the seal and what shapes you want to form.
It’s so incredible the original wax seal stick has been re-imagined into our current crafting technology into something so incredibly useful.
There is no take home message for this piece, other than I, Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) am deeply in love with wax seals. I also have no tangible use or need for them, just a deeply seated want for these beautiful seals.
Hop down the rabbit hole? 🐰🕳
^ by Sruthi Korlakunta
