Glass painting

Finished painting my candle jars yesterday. Will fill them with candle sometime this week. Am rather pleased with them

The one on the right which is just an outline is being filled with a coloured wax mix, the rest will probably be a single colour candle.

I did the butterflies from a template, free hand but based on a template in a glass book but the others were sort of generally out of my head.

probably derived from something I have seen though!

Took me ages to draw the shape on paper, so I could put it inside and then use the outliner paint...glass is a right so and so to paint on!

Compostman liked my colourful take on a Green Man best. I am in the middle of designing a "traditional" Green Man to transfer to a larger candle jar at the moment.

Candle and Soap making suppliers I use

  Following on from my post about making candles and soaps with Compostgirl and her friends, I had an inquiry

Sarahs House said...Hello, It is nice to see that you have done lots of crafts with children. My daughter loves to do anything crafty..lol.
I am interested in trying the soap making and bees wax candles with her, would you be able to suggest a good online place to buy the things needed for this ? I have looked online but there are so many places offering different things I would prefer to try somewhere that had been recommended.

So, to answer Sarah, I get my soap supplies ( and essential oils, botanicals, butters, base oils etc ) from Aromantic. Here is the link to the organic melt and pour soap I use.

I got my latest batch of organic beeswax sheets from Aromantic as well, but had the wicks ( and a lot of other candle making stuff as well) from Full Moons cauldron.

I find both of these stores offer very good service.

I hope this helps?

Sweet smell of craft making

I spent a lot of time over the summer holidays doing various craft things with Compostgirl and her friends. I have already shown some of the sewing we got up to but we also did various other things.In the last week of the summer holidays Compostgirl and two of her friends came round and we made soap and beeswax rolled candles.

The soap we made using organic melt and pour base, then we added various essential oils, natural colours and abrasives and dried flowers to the melted soap. I had previously made up the natural colours by infusing oil with Alkanet (pink) Annatto (yellow) and Paprika ( orange) and we used dried lavender and rose petals from my garden.



I used various moulds and we all made some very nice scented soap! The children were delighted with what they had made and were very proud of themselves.



We also made some rolled beeswax candles which smell divine and again the children loved doing this. We talked about bees, how you get beeswax and how important bees are in all our lives.

I make soap and candles as part of the craft workshops and courses I run, but I usually am working with adults so it was nice to pass on the skills to younger ones.

When the children are a bit older, we will make cold process soap, but for now using melt and pour soap base seems a better option.

I have really enjoyed doing crafty things with Compostgirl and her various friends, it hasbeen good fun. The shildren have had lots of free play running around outside time but during the day wanted to " do something" so we have made things. lots of things! We have done sewing, cardmaking, mosaic making, shoe box threatres and puppets, soap and candle and paper fabric making.

Am looking forward to half term so we can do some more stuff.