Teeny-Tiny

While I was gone, I was thinking about you all, as evidenced by this tutorial.  I made some of these for the teacher's Christmas gift bags, and I thought about doing a tutorial on here for you.  So I took pics while I made them and here goes...

Walnut candles

Ingredient list:   beeswax, walnut halves, wicking appropriate for small candles, double boiler or the equivalent, and patience for pouring the wax...

 When you halve walnuts, be careful and you will get some nice little "boats" that make great candles(they also make great bath-tub boats if you use a tooth pick and a paper sail with only a little bit of wax in the bottom...). 

Start by shaving/chopping off some beeswax, the smaller the pieces, the quicker it will melt.

I don't have a double boiler, nor do I have the need to purchase one when I can engineer one of my own!

Melt the wax over simmering/gently boiling water.

Using your spoon, place a drop or so of melted wax into the bottom of your walnut half.  Immediately place your wick into the wax drop and let it harden.  This will stabilize your wick so it isn't moving around when you pour the rest of the wax into the shell.  As you can see in the picture, I bent the bottom part of the wick, it gives the wax a bit more to hold onto. 

After wick stabilization, you can pour the rest of the wax in, gently!  Be careful, and go slowly because the walnuts will sometimes tip over.  When you are done filling the shells, some will look like hearts, awwwwww!

 

Be sure to trim your wicks to about 1/4 inch before burning.

And there you go, Walnut candles.  Nothing to read a novel by on the winter solstice, by any means, but a sweet addition to a tea party or a mug of hot cocoa by the fire before bedtime...

Keep warm yall!