Tiger-striped dragonfly ornament

When I was busy designing Swarm Dragonflies, I striped some brown ink on a teabag hoping it would make for a relatively realistic flyer.  Turns out this one resembles the Halloween Pennant. I’ve been a fan of skimmers, so it’s nice to know my odonata studies have settled in my brains somewhere.

I jigged a dragonfly from 26-gauge steel wire. Then I dipped the hand-inked teabag into encaustic medium (a beeswax and resin mixture) and adhered it to the shape. This dragonfly has a wingspan of 4 3/4 inches and measures 4 inches long. A 2 inch spiral allows it to float in the air, and additional critters can be attached through a loop on its head.

Encaustics should be cared for as you would for any fine art piece. Encaustic derives from the word ‘burn in’ and is a process of applying molten wax colors to a surface for the creation of images or decoration that began more than 2 millennia ago with Roman Egyptian wax portraits.