Let's make wax-dipped Pine Cone Ornaments.

As you may know, we wish to someday have a Christmas tree that it entire decorated with handmade ornaments... some collected, some made by us, some found at thrift stores or yard sales. We know that it will take many years to collect and make such treasures but we are delighted that we have started on our quest. Each sweet ornament that we make will be carefully packed away after Christmas and stored until next year. Then, we will unwrap it carefully and the memories of this Christmas, the memories of our time together making it, will come flooding back. We will smile and reminisce and feel our holiday spirit grow.

Today, we made wax pine cone ornaments.

Of all our handmade ornaments to date, these little pine cones dipped in beeswax are my favorite of all. They are so pretty with their red bows and golden jackets.

To make beeswax dipped pine cones you will need;

* small pine cones
* eye hooks
* a drill with a small bit
* ribbon
* beeswax

Begin by melting the beeswax over a bain-marie on the stove. A bain-marie can be made by filling a pot, a third full, with water. Bring water to the boil and set your beeswax pot in the boiling water to melt. I have a little milk warmer dedicated to melting beeswax as I work with beeswax often. I let the left-over beeswax harden in the milk warmer and store it for next time. If you don't often work with beeswax, a recycled jar will work just as well as my milk warmer and you can throw it away (or recycle it) when you are done.


While the beeswax is melting, drill a hole, just a little but smaller than the width of your eye hooks, in the top of the pine cone.

Screw the eye hook into the hole.



When the beeswax is melted you can start dipping your pine cones. Hold the pine cone by the eye hook and dip it into the melted beeswax, quickly. Once you have dipped the pine cone, hold it over the melted beeswax to catch the drips.


Let the dipped pine cone rest for a few seconds, allowing the thin coating of beeswax to harden. Then, dip it into the melted beeswax again, quickly. The quicker you dip the pine cone into the wax, the better it will coat the pine cone.


Let the 2nd layer of wax harden for a few moments and then dip it again, quickly. Soon, you will have a delightfully coated pine cone.


Cut a length of ribbon and hang your pretty ornament with a bow.


Merry blessings and magic,
Donni

Making Waxed Easter Eggs.

I love the lead up to Easter... there are so many sweet crafts that Easter inspires... nests, birds, bunnies, eggs... today, we decorated eggshells.

We painted the eggshells we blew out the other day. If you haven't done it before, here is a tutorial on how to clean out an egg shell.

As we love working with melted wax, we decided to paint our eggs with melted crayon wax. Here is a tutorial on how to melt wax and get it ready for paining. This is a craft for an older child. K is 6 and handles working with hot wax very well.

We needed:

* broken crayons

* a few glass jars

* an old paintbrush you don't mind messing up

*clean egg shells

I melted the wax (method described in the above tutorial link).

K then dipped her paintbrush into the liquid wax and painted dots onto her egg shell. First blue...
Then green and then red. She made a gorgeously speckled egg!
I wasn't quite so disciplined and painted wax smudges onto my egg. Here are the finished works... they look so lovely and bright and are wonderful to hold. Isn't there something about the way wax feels?
Happy Easter crafting!

Blessings and magic.