Not everyone is lucky enough to have a place to permanently lay out a working area for their art and craft activities.

It doesn't matter how or where you work, an organised working area improves both safety and output as well as avoiding waste of time and the frustration so evident in a muddled environment.

In short :
BE ORGANISED

You need an area similar to the one shown above. A kitchen table is great because it is at an ideal height for sitting.

To work on you need to use some disposable waste paper. Computer paper pads are ideal but you could use old newsprint, etc.

A computer pad is one of the easiest working surfaces because it provides both a padded cushion under the painting card as well as offering a very convenient "tear off and throw away" facility. The papers manufactured perforations make it clean and effortless to remove the dirtied paper on top, revealing a fresh surface immediately underneath.

Boxed tissues are an ideal and easily available product for both cleaning the wax off the heated tools and also for polishing the finished wax art paintings.

Kitchen roll or cheap absorbent materials are also fine for cleaning the iron but are not so good for polishing because they tend to be more textured and the roughness' can scratch the wax surface.

It is easy for the stylus to slip off the work surface and it always seems to land on the tip and damage the point!

To overcome this problem you can tape a thin rod to the top edge of the work surface.

Follow this

Now you are ready to start in safety.
NOTE: If you have to clear your work area away consider setting it up on a flat board (MDF or Plywood) that you can lift in it's entirety and keep on top of a cupboard or similar - having everything almost ready makes it much more appealing to 'do a bit' even if your time is limited.