How to Make Encaustic Medium

Step 8 Clean Up the Encaustic Medium

You'll notice that the bottom of each 'cake' has some debris in it. This is the organic material from the damar. There may also be some chunks of pigment. You'll want to scrape this off with the palette knife or butter knife. If your medium is uncolored and you take much wax off you can toss it back into the can to re-melt later as well. Scrape until there's no weird stuff left. As always, you're using a knife and could cut yourself. So don't.