Beeswax & the September Give Away

First Post of the Day

Yesterday, Lisa brought her dogs over for the day, something she does a couple times a week. We love having them here and Tammo gets especially excited; his best buddy is Nash. Playtime! Whoo hoo! (Pepper will play with him, but she plays much more sedately than Nash.)

Craig usually cooks himself eggs for breakfast, and the dogs know that he can be counted on to fix them an egg, too, when they are visiting.

Sometimes the wait for egg-time is hard, and his entourage follows him everywhere.

The wait is always worth it, though.

Yesterday I was waiting, too. I'd decided to take a break from sewing and make blackened beeswax ornaments for the Feast. I take up most of the kitchen to do so, and I want to have 100 to take to Feast (they sell really well) so it was going to be an all day project.

So, after everyone had had their egg-time and the dishes were cleared away, I got set up in the kitchen and started melting beeswax for pouring.

I use pelleted, triple cleaned beeswax and melt two cups at a time in a double boiler on a hot plate.

While the wax is melting, I get the rest of the project set up.

I pull out the molds I plan to use and cut and tie brown string for hangers. I clip these in place using fabric clips.

Then I prepare a pie plate of cinnamon for blackening, paper plates for cooling finished ornaments, set out a face mask, and put everything on wax or parchment paper. (I learned long ago that wax cools quickly and has to be scraped off with a knife if it gets on my countertops.)

The first melting always takes the longest because the water in the double boiler must heat up first in order to melt the wax. Once that water is hot, though, the wax melts quickly and there is little delay between each pouring.

Poured and cooling ornaments almost ready to remove from their molds. That's cinnamon on the molds - after I blacken the ornaments, my hands get dusted, too! (I wear a mask so I don't inhale the cinnamon.)

I repeat the process over and over - generally I can only make 5 - 6 ornaments at a time, depending on the size of the ornament.

As you might imagine, my kitchen and house soon smell like mingled beeswax and cinnamon. Heavenly!

I ended up adding a second pie plate of cinnamon as the ornaments were cooling quickly and needed to be unmolded and dusted quickly.

Six hours later, I had gotten 61 made. I'll spray them with sealer today and let that set, then make more on Friday.

Which brings me to the September Give Away. As you might have guessed, this month it is your choice of a blackened beeswax ornament! I will post pictures of the choices after this group is sealed (probably tomorrow.)

The usual rules apply - enter by commenting on any blog entry (including this one) posted between now and Sunday evening at 11:59 PM Eastern Time, September 15. One comment per blog post only, please. 

There is going to be a second blog post today, so you can get two entries in today!

Stay 'tooned and good luck!