Kalamazoo Week: Pouring Beeswax Ornaments

Second Post of the Day

Due to be delivered last Wednesday, those five skeins of thread needed to make the blackened beeswax ornaments finally showed up on Friday. 

Time to work was short, so I immediately opened a skein and began cutting and tying the hangers as fast as I could.

I poured and blackened, poured and blackened, poured and blackened for four hours. In the end, I had 56 new ornaments to take to Kalamazoo.

And then I ran into another problem.

Sealing is done in the garage and the garage was JUST at 55 degrees, the lowest recommended temperature for sealing. Luckily it stayed at 55 and I was able to get the ornaments sealed and done.

Just in time to let them cure overnight and be packed into their containers for the drive up to the farm and packing into the trailer.

Talk about squeaking in right under the wire! 

Coming soon - pictures of all the blackened beeswax ornaments that are heading to Kalamazoo.

Stay 'tooned!

Welcome to Christmas Decorating in the Rockies!

I am struggling to write this morning and I have no idea why. I'm in good shape for Christmas, I anticipate some time in the sewing room finishing the last Christmas project, and then I will spend the rest of the day wrapping gifts. Easy peasy. No stress.

The Yuletide Challenge for the day is "winter scene." Two words. Two words! And yet my mind is blank.

I've gone though lots of photos and the only one I felt was horsey and wintery was one I'd already posted recently in a non related blog post.

Back to searching through pictures. And then  I came across Mountain Mama Jessica's western pine tree on her from porch. Perfect!

The tree sits on a vintage apple crate from our family orchard. That crate is from the 1940s and possibly earlier - a family treasure. (I have one, too, that I use for displays at living history events occasionally.)

The tree is covered in woodsy ornaments and the beeswax ones I have been making for their family the past couple years.

I have several snowflake molds but this is my favorite.

The bison is difficult to make so I don't make too many of them. But it is also suitable for someone living in the west.

Santa Moon and Stars (a favorite of mine), and a Pegasus. (I will ask her if she wants a replacement for this one. I have not seen any other beeswax ornaments go pinkish like that.)

Mother and Child, the one I gave her this year and the other whose back is facing the camera is a howling wolf on a ridge, another tricky one to make.

And that's a glimpse of winter when you live in the Rocky Mountains!

A Christmas Tradition on Thanksgiving

 First Post of the Day

This weekend I did some Christmas prep. I like to give ornaments I've made to family and friends. They might be embroidered, they might be beeswax, or they might even be sewn. It doesn't matter - it's a family tradition that goes back to when my mom began giving my kids an ornament every Christmas.

Her goal was that, when they became adults and left home, her grandchildren would have a "starter set" of ornaments that already were a familiar part of home and past Christmases to hang on their own Christmas trees. She succeeded beyond her wildest dreams, and as their mama, I love to see her ornaments on their trees, too.

My mother gave her ornaments out on Christmas Day, but every year when I took down the tree, I felt sad that my kids would have to wait a whole year to see their new ornament hanging on it.

So, I tweaked the tradition; I give my grands and kids their ornaments at Thanksgiving if we are together, or the first week of December if they have to be mailed. (With a note, "Open now!" on them.)

I also give ornaments to my siblings and their families on Thanksgiving, too. All in all, I hand out 35 ornaments each year.

When I began making beeswax ornaments, the goal was to sell them at events. Then I realized that they would be a unique and very unusual gift for family members.

Knowing how wonderful it is to see my kids' ornaments from my mother on their trees, I am excited to know that, long after I am gone, my kids and grands will have ornaments from me hanging on their own trees.

Maybe my kids will look at their adult children's trees and see my ornaments. A smile, maybe a tear, but most certainly, a flood of happy memories.

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Busy as a Bee(swax)

Making blackened beeswax ornaments is not a difficult process, but it is complicated and takes time.  

Time to heat the beeswax (using pelleted beeswax instead of block beeswax speeds up the melting process),

time to measure, cut, and tie the strings for the hangers,

 and time to prepare the molds for the hot beeswax. 

Once that's all done, the actual process proceeds quickly.

I pour a batch, replenish the pellets in the double boiler and begin melting those, prep some new molds, and then pop the just-poured batch of ornaments out of their molds and dust them with cinnamon.

I set them onto paper plates for cooling, and by the time all that is done, the next batch of beeswax is fully melted and ready to be poured. I repeat this process over and over until I am satisfied I have made enough for the next event.

Once in a while I do run into a problem. Long molds can be tricky - the ornaments sometimes break when I am removing them from their molds.

And since I unmold the ornaments over a pan of cinnamon, then their wax is contaminated and cannot be reused. (I often pour ornaments and things that I do not plan to blacken, so my wax has to remain pure and not have cinnamon or other impurities in it.)

These beeswax hearts are an example of something that I do not blacken. Used for waxing thread by sewists, you sure don't want cinnamon on them.

I got some new molds for Christmas that I had been looking forward to using.

The Madonna and Child is beautiful! 

And this unusual design is really nice, too. (I'm not sure what it is, but I like it!)

Soon the plates of cooling ornaments begin stacking up on my counters.

Plates one and two.

Plates three and four.

Plates five and six.

Plates seven and eight.

The unmolded sewing cakes.

After four hours, I stopped. My body was reminding me that I am still healing and enough was enough. I'd made fifty ornaments and with what I still had in my inventory, that should be enough for Kalamazoo.

I turned off the hot plate, laid down on the couch (Pepper cuddled against my legs), and fell asleep for an hour!

The ornaments aren't done yet, though. Today I will put several coats of sealer on them, let that dry overnight tonight, and then I will pack them up tomorrow in preparation for KZoo.

I also have to put the kitchen to rights - wiping down all the counters as the cinnamon often drifts when I dust the ornaments, washing and air drying the molds, and cleaning out the double boiler pot. (Always a messy job.) 

Tired as I was, we never did get to Dog N Suds. We ate leftovers and then I fell into bed early.

Still, I am pleased that, despite not even being two weeks post op from a very major surgery, I got so much done, more than I thought I would, and the next morning (now) I am feeling good. Clearly my body is healing and I am grateful.

Beeswax Ornaments (with a Little Help from my Friends)

First, some blogkeeping:

While I like giving my blog friends the opportunity to see what I am selling, it seems as though my blog is morphing into a sales place, not something I want it to do. My blog is my journal first and foremost and I'd like to keep it that way.

With that in mind, I will be posting anything for sale underneath the blog post that I have written that day. (There is nothing today.)

Labrador Retrievers shed. A lot. So, when Nash (part Lab) and Molly (100% Lab) arrived yesterday for a play day with Pepper (100% Lab), my plans to continue cleaning and reorganizing my models changed.

Those dogs follow me everywhere when they visit and I knew that they would crowd into the horse room and keep me company while I cleaned.

Pepper is in there a lot, but she sheds less than most Labs. And Nashie's shedding is pretty negligible, too.

But Mama! Boy howdy! She sheds more than the other two dogs combined. (She reminds me of Charlie Brown's Pigpen who "sheds" whenever he moves, only Molly sheds hair every time she moves, not dirt.)

So, I changed plans and did some prep work for the upcoming living history event in Kalamazoo.

I decided to make a batch of beeswax ornaments.

I learned a long time ago to use the beeswax pellets rather than the big blocks of beeswax - the pellets melt much faster.

I use a double boiler to melt them. You can use a microwave, but I can control the melting process much more easily this way.

Almost ready to pour - just a bit of unmelted beeswax left. 

Molds prepped and ready to be filled with the hot beeswax.

Immediately after pouring. 

The yellow rim indicates the beeswax is cooling. The one on the bottom left, the first one I poured, is almost cool enough to remove from its mold.

The cooled but still warm ornament is popped out of the mold and put into a pie pan of cinnamon. This is tricky - if the ornament is too warm, you risk damaging it during the unmolding step. But if it's too cool, the cinnamon won't stick to it as well.

The same ornament after I have dredged it in the cinnamon. 

Mountain Mama Jessica gave me this mold of a tree for Christmas. Isn't it pretty?

 

Finished ornaments are set aside to cool and cure.

Then I will spray them with a sealant to keep any loose cinnamon from rubbing off.

Making beeswax ornaments is clearly a messy project - that's cinnamon all over my apron. 

But that mess does not include Labrador hair despite the fact that, as expected, my pack followed me into the kitchen and waited while I worked. (Obviously holding out hope that I'd take a break and play ball with them, too.)

I will let this batch continue to cure today and probably spray the fixative tomorrow. And with no doggos joining us today, it's back to cleaning, culling, and reorganizing a few more shelves.