Fire's date with monoprints

What to bring next Thursday, April 17th besides your normal encaustic bits:
- everyone bring one or more panels to paint white. It will have your print or painting or blank paper applied to it the following week. I'll bring the white acrylic paint and a brush.
- Marco, your panel you painted yesterday. You may scrape the wax off and experiment again or continue with what you have begun. Or you can spend the evening on monoprints. Everyone else bring what you want to work on or you can just do monoprints.
- either your encaustic medium already melted and formed or your beeswax and Damar crystals and a container to melt the wax in
- torch
- pigments in oil paint, dry pigments or encaustic stick or the other forms we mentioned
- paper for monoprints. I would suggest about 25 sheets of some inexpensive paper. If you want to experiment with some nice Japanese paper or printmaker's paper that would be fine too.

Some notes about making medium -
- it will take about 4 hours. The timing may be different depending on the the vessel you're using.
-set the electric skillet or crock pot to warm or lowest setting
- put in the Damar crystals in a 1:8 ratio - Damar:beeswax - the 4 ounces of Damar to the 2 pounds of beeswax
- put the beeswax in on top of the Damar
- put the lid on, slightly ajar, and let it melt.
Check it now and then to see how it's coming. Pay attention to the odor. It should smell like beeswax. If it smells obnoxious, turn it off.
After awhile - maybe 3 hours - the wax will be melted but the Damar may still be tarry. You can stir it around with a wooden spoon to spread out the Damar or just put the lid back on and wait longer.
- when it is all melted together use a dedicated soup ladle (you won't want to use it for food again) and spoon the liquid wax into the cupcake papers. It is best if you filter the wax as you ladle it. A cheap kitchen strainer should work. Again, you won't want to use it for food once you've used it for wax.
If you have to interrupt this process, no problem. Turn it off then back on later.
Note: this is a messy process. Protect surfaces.