Right, so this problem appeared a few days ago. I was gifted a whole bunch of these pots, about a year ago, and hadn't as yet used them. I tried to use one last weekend, only to discover it was totally hard inside the pot. And I mean hard- almost like a stone! No amount of rubbing the surface, or even trying to scrape it yielded anything at all. So, I made use of Google to see if there was a way of retrieving them, as of the 15 or so pots I had, almost every single one was solid.As you can see from these two pictures, the wax has gone totally solid in the pots. The pink one has even shrunk away from the sides of the pot.
What I did discover was that apparently this issue of them hardening in the pots had appeared a while after the product had been available. The info I found said that Creative Expressions, who make this product, had released a Blending Solution to help. As far as I knew, I didn't have any- but later discovered I did- but in the info I found, one person suggested using turpentine to soften it, as it was wax based. I didn't like that idea at all, as for starters, I hate the smell, and I also thought that the turps smell would linger in the product, especially as they are in closed jars.
After giving it a little thought, I wondered if other products you can buy- Gamsol/Low Odour Thinners( Daler-Rowney) or Zest it would do the job, as they are meant for blending wax pencils?I actually first did this experiment with a pot of blue, which I didn't photograph beforehand, but it was exactly the same.
The first product I tried was the Daler Rowney Low Odour Thinners, and I have to say, I really can't smell anything from it at all. I made a few grooves in the top of each pot, and added 1millilitre to the green one, which was how much I ended up using in the blue one.
I put the lid back on, and left it to soak in.
I gave the pink one the same amount of Zest-It, and by then I'd discovered I also had the Creative Expressions Blending Solution, I must have received that along with the waxes, so I used that one with the gold pot.
I put the lids on them all, and left them overnight.
By the way, if you do have a problem with any chemical smell, as the name suggests, the Zest it has a Citrus smell.
I have some small syringes I use for silicone glue, so that's how I knew how much I was adding. I'd guess it amounts to about 10 drops.
Next day, I took off the lids, and the wax had softened enough I was able to smoosh it round with a palette knife. Yesterday, I'd struggled to score lines in them with a scalpel!
This was the blue after I'd softened it.
I've rubbed some onto some textured black card, so you can see they are now useable.
I can't honestly say any one of the solutions worked better than another,they all did the job perfectly well.
So, if you have a bottle of Gamsol/ Low Odour Thinners , or they can be easily found in a local art supply store, then I'd go with that for ease of availability. Zest-It is available through Amazon, certainly, and the Blending Solution is available from a number of craft stores, if you run a Google search for it.
What I don't know is why they had a problem with it hardening. I don't know if it was a problem with the product itself, or, as I suspect, it's the fit of the lids which don't to me seem to be airtight. They are also very easy to cross thread, which is annoying.I hopefully have a solution to the fit of the lids, which I'm trying out.
What I've done is add a square of cling film over the top of the pot before putting the lid on, and I'll report back in a few weeks if the newly reconstituted wax stays soft.
So, I hope this is helpful- these pots of wax are not cheap, and certainly I'd not be happy about having to just toss them out, especially if I'd gone out and bought them.
One thing I would suggest is to carefully assess just how dried out your pots are before deciding how much solution to add, whichever one you choose. Like I said, mine were rock solid, and I tried it with one pot first, figuring as it was unusable anyway, I had nothing to lose.
I'd say try a few drops- maybe 5- first off, scoring lines in the top of the wax if you can. Leave overnight, and if need be you can always repeat the process.
The info I found about the CS Blending Solution says you can add a few drops to a little wax, and mix to make a paint, so it would be possible to thin them down too much to use as a gilding wax. You can always add more if needed, but you're not going to be able to take it away, unless you left it open to dry out again!
