Crayon on Candle, Melted

The morning began (as many mornings around here do) with encaustic art:

It soon became apparent to me, however, that on this day, Willow was more interested in the reactions of the candle and crayon to each other than she was in their effect on the canvas surface, so I showed her how to drip some wax onto the canvas and use it like glue to mount her candle, at which point she could experiment more closely with her specific interest:

The rolled beeswax candle IS really fascinating to play with in this way--sometimes the melted crayon pours down between the rolls, so that you can vaguely see it through the translucent layers of the candle, and sometimes it pours down the outside, and layers add to layers, etc.:

Will burned that candle down to the ground, let me tell you, and many unwrapped crayons lost their lives, but the intuitive knowledge that she's gaining of the math of how fluid flows and the rate at which fire burns, and of the chemistry of heat reactions and changes in states of matter, and the practice that she's getting in problem-solving and meeting inquiry, not to mention how her mind and body are experiencing the ego-less pleasure of immersive free play, and the contemplative state of being of watching soothing, smooth, unpredictable reactions--well, that's a morning quite well spent!

P.S. I have a round-up of crayon crafts that DON'T involve coloring over at Crafting a Green World today, if you're interested.

The Birthday Girl's Birthday Candles

I had to craft up some long and skinny birthday candles for Syd's star cake--

--so I went ahead and made up some extra rolled beeswax birthday candle sets for for my pumpkinbear etsy shop:

 
 
 
And yes, that's Willow having a pretend birthday party out in the backyard, complete with strawberry bundt cake and a real birthday candle, lit. What's the point in having a million handmade birthday candles if you don't get to light them, make a wish, and blow them out every single day?

No point at all, if you ask me.

Fairy Candles

The girls LOVE to make rolled beeswax candles almost as much as they love to light them and gaze at them and blow them out and re-light them and otherwise goof around with fire and warm wax.

Clearly, these activities require adult supervision (although the girls can roll their candles perfectly well, I use an x-acto knife to cut the beeswax sheets to size for them), so I tend to be spending a lot of time these days hanging out at the big wooden table, many gorgeous sheets of brightly-colored beeswax in front of me.

A girl's gotta keep herself entertained, you know?

That creative time has resulted in a few candles for utility, but mostly candles for fun--lots and lots of candles for future birthdays, and lots and lots of candles for the girls' imaginative play. They're especially entranced by their new tiny fairy candles, a few sets of which I've listed in my pumpkinbear etsy shop:

  
 
 
I'm assuming that the fairies don't mind sharing their treasures with a couple of enchanting little children, don't you think?

Candlemakers

Willow and I have a new hobby to tell you about:

Candlemaking! Even though we'd never tried it before, I was confident enough that the girls would enjoy making rolled beeswax candles to buy some supplies in bulk from Knorr Beeswax. I figured that Sydney, my hands-on craft kid, would be the one to sit at the table for four hours in one day rolling beeswax candles, but I was surprised:

Syd hasn't touched the candlemaking supplies, but Willow apparently finds it a meditative, contemplative break from her immersive mental world (Matt and I call this "the Willowverse"), because she spent pratically an entire afternoon, and much of the evening, rolling out a huge variety of candles.

Well, of course someone had to sit with her and help out when she needed it (ahem), and so I ended up making quite a variety, myself:

I have a rolled beeswax candle tutorial up at Crafting a Green World, but they're really quite simple to make, even for little children. Willow found her niche in creating one particular size of two-toned candles so well that I encouraged her to consider making some to sell at our summer craft fairs:

"How much should I charge? One dollar?" she asked.

"Well," I said, "For every candle that you sell, I think that you should pay me $1 for the cost of the supplies, so you'll want to charge more than that, or you won't make a profit."

"Two dollars?"

"I think that people would pay more."

"Three dollars?"

"How about six dollars? Then, after you give me one dollar, you'd have..."

"Wow, five dollars!"

"And how about if you sold six candles?"

"Five...ten...fifteen...........thirty dollars! I'll buy some BeyBlades!"

"I'll drive you straight to the store."

There's still plenty of room for experimentation, however, as she then went on to make "the longest candle in the world":

And then the shortest:

I had thought that these beeswax sheets would be sort of a novelty craft supply, but I already need to order more! I'm thinking that we'll be doing more math with spiral forms this week.