Weddingbee Blog

Along with Mr. Sew’s desire for no-doodle manvitations, there was another wish he had on his list of things that are formal.

Wax.

I agreed with him. A wax seal screams “formal”. So to realize his vision, I bought Mr. Sew a little double happiness seal, and found some white glue stick wax at the now-closed Pearl Art Store in San Francisco to go with it.

In addition, we purchased some red ribbon, and cut it into 100 ten-inch strips to wrap around our pocket folds.

Now, there’s already a great thread going around on the boards with tips and tricks for glue-gun wax seals, but I’ll show you our process as well.

First, Mr. Sew created an elaborate setup (that’s probably completely unnecessary). He took a baking pan and placed an ice pack inside. Then he covered the ice pack with a loaf pan, creating his “working surface”.

He also used a measuring cup full of ice water. The ice-water was used to chill his metal seal before and after each application.

He simply pumped a few squirts of glue onto his cold surface, and then plopped his ice-chilled seal into the puddle, holding it there until the glue set.

Once set, he pulled the seal out, and peeled the seal off the surface to fully dry. It’s that easy!

Now, he chose not to glue the seal directly on the ribbon belly band since he didn’t want to mess any up on accident. There were quite a few screw-ups at first, since you have to figure out how much of a glue puddle will make a good seal.

He tried melting the mess-ups down to reuse the wax, but it created a sputtering hot mess. I don’t suggest it.

Gathering materials, it was now time to attach ribbon and wax to the cards!

To attach the pre-made seals, we first glued the ribbon together with normal hot glue.

Then we added another hot-glue dot, and placed the seal on top!

Not too shabby!

Cost breakdown thus far:

Total from previous steps: $112.28
Wax seal: $14.90 (with shipping)
Glue sticks: ~$4
Ribbon: ~$18 for six spools (we needed five, but one spool was cut incorrectly)

Total so far: $149.18 or $1.49 per manvite.

Any wax seal guys or gals out there? Real or faux - what’s your preference?