How to make Beeswax Window Hangings.

We are having so much fun decorating our home this Christmas with natural, handmade treasures. Today we made beeswax window decorations. I adore these! The smoothness of the wax and the warm caramel color is so pleasing to look at. But the thing I love most about beeswax window hangings, is when the winter sun shines through the window and warms the wax... the wax gives off such a wonderful aroma... a natural, outdoorsy, honey smell that's so lovely!

To make these lovely Christmas decorations you will need...

Beeswax (found at craft stores or online... try www.etsy.com or the lovely farm of one of my readers, Natural Earth Family Farm. They sell organic beeswax... yum!)

small tart moulds

tooth picks

a recycled jar

ribbon

To melt our wax, we made a bain-marie on our stove by boiling a small pot of water and then placing our jar of wax in the boiling water.

The beeswax turns a gorgeous caramel color when melted and smells so lovely.

We then poured our melted wax into our tart moulds. Be careful as melted wax is hot! We always keep a dish of iced water on hand just incase we burn ourselves.

After a few minutes, the wax starts to harden. When it was the consistency of peanut butter, we placed a toothpick in each mould. This would create the hole for the hanging ribbon.
Be sure to place your tooth pick in the right place for hanging.

After a few hours, the wax had hardened. We wiggled the toothpicks out of the wax.

Neat little holes remained.
They looked so pretty as the wax cooled.

When they were fully cooled and hardened, we eased them out of their moulds.

K used a skewer to widen the holes a little.

We tied pretty ribbon through the holes.

And hung our beeswax decorations in the window.

Already, our home smells warm and cozy like honey!

If you haven't already entered our enchanting Giveaway, there is still time... your kids will LOVE you if you win and you might even get your treasures in time for Christmas. The winner will be drawn and announced on Friday evening, 18th Dec... so pop on over to enter!

Blessings and magic.

Silent Saturday.

The Little Girl and the Lost Tooth.

Friday's Nature Table.

Welcome to Friday's Nature Table, a forum for us to share the nature inspired things we have done with our children... our nature ideas, crafts, activities, inspirations and photos. Nature is all around... her magic is everywhere!

I encourage everyone to participate. The more wonderful ideas we can share about how to enjoy our beautiful earth, the happier we will be. And, as always, thanks to everyone who participated last week!

Enjoy! and thank you for sharing today...

Blessings and magic.

Needle Felted Christmas Ornaments... Felted Acorns, Fairies and Gnomes.

I can't believe it... this time last year, I hadn't even heard of Etsy! It is totally amazing to me... Etsy is now such an enormous part of my life... I can hardly imagine what I did with my time before I knew of it's existence. If you haven't heard of Etsy either, visit etsy.com and be prepared for an adventure second to none. Etsy is an online market place for all things handmade... it is like visiting a craft fair the size of Los Angeles! And the treasures you can find! Beautiful, creative, handmade treasures. There's nothing quite like it!

I opened my shop, Fairyfolk, in March and have so enjoyed the creativity it has inspired within me... it has been a blast!

Especially fun, has been coming up with a range of Christmas decorations for the tree. K helped with some wonderful ideas, as did A Good Man and together we designed and then needle felted our little treasures. All of them are for sale in my Etsy shop. I wanted to share them with you as things are getting busy over at Fairyfolk and I will have to stop taking orders soon. I don't want my lovely blogging friends to miss out.

Here is our collection...

Walnut Baby

This little needle felted gnome baby is sleeping in a real walnut shell. He is of the Toadstool Clan with his toadstool hat and toadstool blanket.

Bright Acorn Ornaments

Here is a set bright and colorful, felted acorn ornaments. The acorn caps were collected by my family and me from the oak magestic trees around us. I wet felted the colorful acorns from wool.

Pink Christmas Tree Fairy

This is a little Christmas Fairy is needle felted from gorgeous soft and natural wool. Her wings are seed pods that we collected from the trees around us and in her hands she carries a magic wand to bless all the little children who are so eagerly awaiting Christmas.

Acorn Fairy

This chap is an Acorn Fairy. He is also needle felted. He wears a real acorn cap and carries a magical acorn trumpet in his hands.

Candy Cane Felted Acorns

Here are a set of felted Candy Cane Acorn Ornaments. Pink, white and green... the colors of Christmas.

All our ornaments are inspired by magic and made of natural, eco friendly, non toxic materials. They are little heirloom treasures to delight and enchant.

Blessings and magic.

Make a Thanksgiving Walnut Candle.

Continuing with our Handmade Holidays, today we made sweet little walnut candles. They are enchanting little gifts from nature, made with walnut shells and beeswax. They will flicker warmly on our Thanksgiving table.

We needed...

walnuts (halved and shelled) and other pods

a jar of beeswax

candle wicks

and scissors

We used 3 walnut halves, a seed pod and a big acorn cap.

Place you candle wick into the walnut and measure how long you need your wick to be. Cut it accordingly.

We needed 4 shorter wicks for the walnuts and acorn cap and one longer one for our bigger pod.

Now it is time to melt the beeswax. I made a bain-marie by filling a pot with a few inches of water and bringing it to the boil. When your water is boiling, put your jar of wax in the boiling water. This gently melts your beeswax. Please be careful... boiling water and melted wax is hot!

When we work with melted wax, I always have a bowl of iced water prepared. Touch wood, we haven't burnt ourselves as we are very careful, but I feel safer knowing that if an accident happened, I could put a burn in cold water immediately.
(Note: this is from a reader who says... "I wanted to let you know, though, that burns should never be put in ice water, nor should a burn be iced. You should not even use cold water, it can cause cold damage to the sensitive skin. Instead, immerse the burn in room temp or cool water to help bring down the swelling and help with the pain, or run cool / room temp water over it")

Once the beeswax is melted, it takes on a gorgeous golden glow... just like honey, as K noticed. And it smells wonderful too.

I use a paper towel when I pour melted wax. Dab a little melted wax onto the paper towel and then fix your walnut to the wax.

This holds your walnut in place for you to pour the wax safely into.

Pour the melted wax right up to the rim of the walnut.

After a few minutes, the wax hardens enough for you to insert your wick. The cooling wax holds your wick in place.

We made 4 candles... 2 walnut, 1 acorn and 1 seed pod.

Don't they look charming? K thinks they are just the right size to fit on a bunny's table... I had a wonderful flash of her imagination when she said that :-)

We lit one just to see that it really does work. It gives off the sweetest honey smell... fragrance from Mother Nature herself.

The others, we have packed away in a special place... we are saving them to decorate our Thanksgiving table with. We will sit around our table smiling and loving and laughing while our little candles flicker happily, reminding us of all we have to be thankful for.

Check out our other Handmade Christmas decorations and these bright nature-inspired Felted Wool Acorn Christmas Tree Decorations here.

Blessings and magic.

Wax Pine Cone Christmas Decorations.

Can you believe that there are only 32 days until Christmas? I can't! This year has flown by so fast I feel I have hardly had time to catch my breath... let alone get ready for the next!

We are very excited to start preparing for our handmade christmas and will be posting many Christmas crafts, activities and decorations.

Here is our first handmade Christmas Tree decoration... isn't it lovely!

These pretty pine cone decorations are made by dipping pine cones into melted wax. They are lovely handmade Christmas decorations using natural materials that you can find anywhere. You can use beeswax which gives off a lovely warm honey aroma but we chose to use colorful wax instead. Besides... my Mr T is a crayon-breaker extraordinaire and we have bucket loads of broken crayons just waiting to be upcycled.

To make our pine cone tree decorations, we needed...

my new drill (isn't it gorgeous?!)

eye screws

broken crayons

cups

pine cones

glass jars

Start by drilling a hole in the bottom of the pine cone with a drill bit that is the size of your eye screws.

Screw the eye screws into the holes.

This is a great activity for a 5 year old. After a lot of hand/eye coordination and concentration, she felt a great sense of achievement when her task was complete.

Now is the time sorting the broken crayons into colors. K is very good at this and even Mr T got the hang of it. We chose blue, green and red for our wax pine cones.
Mr T was especially good at peeling the paper off the crayons.

And then breaking them up into their respective cups.

Crayons sorted, time for melting them...

Transfer each color into a glass jar. Pop the jar, one at at time, into the microwave. Heat on high for 2 minute increments, stirring every 2 minutes, until the wax crayons have melted. Ours took about 5 minutes to melt. Please be careful... the melted wax and the glass jars are very hot... I used my oven gloves to handle the jars.

Holding it by the eye screw, dip your pine cone into the melted wax. Depending on how thick your wax is, you may need to let your pine cone cool for 30 seconds and then dip it again for a thicker coat of color.

Place each colorful pine cone on wax paper to cool.

Cut a length of ribbon for hanging and your lovely pine cone decorations are ready for display.

They have such a wonderfully smooth and waxy texture. Both of my children are totally fascinated by them and hold them lovingly. They smell them, rub them against their cheeks, stroke them. I do wonder if they will ever make it onto the tree?

Check out another fun wax Holiday decorating tutorial here and lovely nature-inspired Felted Acorn Christmas Tree Decorations here.

Blessings and magic for Christmas.

Silent Sunday.

My First Born's first loose tooth... hanging by a thread :-(

Friday's Nature Table.

Welcome to Friday's Nature Table, a forum for us to share the nature inspired things we have done with our children... our nature ideas, crafts, activities, inspirations and photos. Nature is all around... her magic is everywhere!

I encourage everyone to participate. The more wonderful ideas we can share about how to enjoy our beautiful earth, the happier we will be. And, as always, thanks to everyone who participated last week!

Enjoy! and thank you for sharing today...

Blessings and magic.

Pine Needle Forest

We have a pine forest that we love to play in.

With a pine needle carpet under our feet.

Lovely places for children to hide.

And gnomes too...

Pine needle beds to lie in, castles to bulldoze, nests to make...

We are reminded of how rich and sensory Mother Natures toys are and how fulfilled we feel when in her presence.

Blessings and magic.