candles...check.

Don't forget to join us tomorrow for Earth Hour - Saturday March 28 at 8:30PM local time.


The boys love any excuse to decorate and embellish beeswax candles. So, today we cut, carved, decorated and embellished candles to light our hour (or more) tomorrow night.


We are ready!

Happy Imbolc.

Today the boys had a friend over for some Imbolc crafting. We made orange skin beeswax candles, painted terra cotta pots and planted crocus bulbs, baked sugar cookies that the boys rolled in golden sunny sugar, and celebrated the returning sun.

"Fire and purification are an important aspect of Imbolc (St. Brigid's Day). The lighting of candles and fires represents the return of warmth and the increasing power of the Sun over the coming months."

Tonight we will have dinner by candlelight, burning our sun shaped orange citrus globes to light our way into the coming spring, read some poems, and have a cozy evening at home.


It is easy to make orange skin beeswax candles. Our friend brought the oranges - the tops cut in a zig zag pattern, and then all the fruit center removed (yum), leaving a perfect shell for the beeswax.

I melted beeswax in a double boiler we use just for candle making.

We then put 2/0 cotton wick into a wick holder, and pinched it closed with pliers. I dipped the wick into the melting beeswax to coat, and dripped a bit of beeswax into the orange to secure the bottom wick tab in place. We then wrapped the wick around a chopstick balanced on top of the orange...to hold the wick straight.


Once the wax was melted, we chatted with the boys about wax safety, and then with me holding their hand over the handle and guiding the pot, we poured the cooling beeswax slowly into the oranges. We left just under an inch of space of headroom at the top of the peel. We let the candles sit to harden/dry. When they are hard, we unrolled the wick, and trimmed it down to 1/4 - 1/2".


The candle is ready to burn - the orange ball is so sunny and inviting and the smell of beeswax is amazing. We will burn these tonight, and continue to use the candles until the peel is no longer fresh, and will then peel it off and use the candles in a heat safe dish or canning jar until they are done!


Happy Imbolc to all of you...to the return of the sun!

candle decorating.

One of the crafts the boys enjoy repeating is decorating our pillar candles for each season. It is simple, but the decorated candles look nice and add to our nature or dinner table!


We have a few sets of the small cookie cutters which we use for wax and clay. We use them a LOT. For our fall candles, the boys picked nice fall colors and cut shapes out of embellishing beeswax - they picked leaves and acorns.


We then simply press the beeswax shapes onto the candles - warm the shapes up a tad bit between your hands before pressing the pieces on and it will stick. You only need a light bond. If your hands don't do the trick, I hold a match to the back of a piece to warm it a little (*quickly* - don't melt it!) before my son presses it on. When the holiday or season has passed, if your candle remains, you can simply remove the wax pieces and decorate for the next season! Decorating plain pillars also makes a nice gift.

beeswax craft.

We had a whole fun morning of beeswax on Friday. I have a box filled with 1 lb. beeswax blocks we got from a local beekeeper mama, and this was the perfect time to bring it out. Days are cooler, dark comes earlier, and there is nothing like the smell of melting beeswax and beeswax candles.

To get started, we first collected a bunch of beautiful red leaves from our backyard maple and pressed a whole bunch in our flower press for craft projects later.


We let the rest dry on the tablecloth (dewy morn) while we melted beeswax in the double boiler. While it was melting we got everything ready. We covered the table with paper, put water-repellent aprons on the boys, cut our wicks and got our small pots ready to pour wax into, and set out a heat-proof pie plate to hold the pot of wax. I chatted with A & G about what we needed to do to keep it safe (and clean).


When ready, I set the beeswax on the table in the pie plate, and as I held the pot the boys carefully dipped each leaf in the beeswax, and set down onto freezer paper to dry.


We then let the leaves dry - we have a few fun projects planned, so we made several dozen. We've made these before - they are so beautiful! We got the idea at In These Hills. Dawn made a nice mobile with hers this week.


We re-heated the wax again after the leaves were done, and then made dipped candles. Using a long wick, we dipped and dripped, dipped and dripped until each boy had a small beeswax taper. They are a little misshapen, but they burn just fine and the boys love that they made them.


For the last bit of wax, I poured it into prepped pots. To get those ready before we started, the boys painted the inside of 3" ceramic pots (small) with copper paint. I added a leaf and stripes on a few. We let the paint dry. We placed a small bit of special candle wax over the bottom drain hole to plug, and then put our pre-dipped wicks in place. I just needed to pour the remaining beeswax into the pots and we have votives! Nothing wasted, and many great projects completed with just one pound of beeswax!

We have a few ideas for those leaves, so stay tuned!