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Administrator on April 30th, 2007
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These days I never hear much about the old May Day celebrations, but I do remember that as a child I used to make a May Basket for my mother. I’d either find or make the basket and fill it with wildflowers and/or candy. I don’t remember the part about ringing the doorbell and running away (perhaps because for me “run” seemed to be a synonym for “fall down”), but I do remember that she was supposed to be surprised. Just why she would be surprised every year as the same event occurred, I don’t know!
I’ve never seen a Maypole dance, but after doing a search on Google, found that such celebrations are still being held here and there throughout the world, including at least one college campus in the USA. Here are a few links that you might find of interest: May Day celebration, New Haven, CT , a brief history of May Day celebrations, an English child’s view of May Day.
It’s a bit late to plan on giving someone a May Basket, but don’t forget that Mothers’ Day is looming on the horizon. If you don’t know what to do for your Mom, you might want to take a look at the gift baskets for Mom page on my Silver and Stone website
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Administrator on April 13th, 2007
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Just had another birthday and am having a hard time believing that I could really be that old. Everyone keeps saying
It’s better than the alternative.
and so far that is true!
All in all, it was rather a nice birthday despite the fact that I spent the majority of it working at my store. My husband had the day off from work and prepared a three course meal for us, culminating in a made from scratch Chocolate-Orange Cake with Apricot-Grand Marnier Sauce. Yummy! I’ll have to check with him and see whether or not he used a recipe or if he can remember the amounts of ingredients he used. If possible, I’ll post a recipe for it here soon.
Another nice birthday surprise came when my accountant called, sang me a couple bars of a birthday song and announced that we would be getting a decent tax refund. Alriiiight! Now that’s a present we can both use.
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Administrator on April 3rd, 2007
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The candle making techniques you will find in this article are for use with gel wax. The transparency of the gel makes it an ideal medium for making unique candle creations using embedded objects; however, these objects often create problems of their own.
For safety’s sake, no flammable object should be put near the wick of the candle as it might then become a second “wick” and cause the candle to flare out of control. The exception to this rule would be when wax embeds are used and meant to burn along with the gel, as in the many “fruit tart” and “pie” candles on the market. Special care must be used to keep the gel temperature below 175 degrees when incorporating wax embeds. Pouring gel over the wax at higher temperatures will melt the wax and you’ll end up with a mess of cloudy, “marbled” gel wax.
I recently used wax cherries to make Manhattan candles and found that the best way to achieve the results I wanted was to make the candle using three separate pours. I first filled the martini glass up to about one inch and let the gel cool. After placing the cherry on top of this gel, I poured just enough gel to cover the cherry. Once that was cool, I filled the candle to the top. One of the reasons for doing it this way was so that I could clean up any globs of melted “cherry” that might occur before filling the glass. The second gel layer seemed to protect the embed just in case the final pour might be a little hotter than I’d intended. Using an initial small amount of gel wax can be a good way to get an embedded object at the height that you want.
Other problems that you might find with embedded objects include the production of too many bubbles, discoloration of your gel caused by leaching dyes or paints from the objects, and difficulty in getting the objects placed where you want them. You can sometimes prevent your embeds from generating bubbles by coating them first with gel. Porous items such as wood and shell are likely to form a lot of bubbles as the air held inside their structure is gradually released. I have seen instructions to soak such materials in mineral oil for half an hour prior to using them in gel candles and this makes a lot of sense; however I have yet to try it.
Unless you want your embed to sit at the very bottom of your candle, it is imperative to avoid heavy items. I make “garnishes” for my cocktail candles out of oven-baked clay and nearly pulled my hair out over the clay “cherries” that insisted on disappearing into the depths of the Pina Colada candle. I now make the cherry with a crumpled tinfoil center, thus producing a much lighter object, but have found that even with the lighter garnish, I must use a thin layer of paraffin over the gel to keep the cherry on top of the candle. If you want to have an assortment of items at different levels in your candle, there are a few techniques that you can try. One of the simplest is to glue your items to the glass, but beware the bubbles that generally result! Another way to position items is to secure them with thread before you pour the gel and then to pull on one end of the thread loop once the gel is set. The main problems with this candle making technique are that it is very labor intensive (especially if you are using a lot of embeds) and that the thread leaves a “trail” in the gel as it is removed. The third positioning technique that I have tried is to simply fill the container with multiple pours so that objects can be set at particular levels within the candle. This seems to work well as long as the objects are light weight and heavy density gel is used. You can sometimes see a mark at the point where one layer touches the next, but it doesn’t usually stand out all that much.
Finally, we can’t talk about gel candle making techniques without talking about bubbles! Sometimes we love them and sometimes we hate them, but with gel wax, they’re always around. I have seen some “experts” advise us to pour at the hottest temperature possible to avoid bubbles and I have seen some advise exactly the opposite. In my own experience, a cool pour will produce LOTS of bubbles— exactly what I want in my champagne candles and exactly what I don’t want in a
treasure candle. If you want to avoid bubbles, never use any wooden implement to stir your gel. Although you don’t want to lose a lot of your fragrance by leaving it on the heat too long after you’ve added the fragrance oil to your gel, letting the bubbles caused by stirring dissipate before you pour is a good idea. I’ve noticed that candles made with leftover gel that’s been reheated tend to have fewer bubbles than those poured from a “fresh” batch. Get your ladle or pouring spout as close to the container as possible before you pour if you don’t want bubbles — pouring from a height will tend to churn up your gel and put more air into it.
Okay, despite doing everything right, you still have more bubbles in your candles than you wanted. Now what can you do? If you are making candles without any embeds, you can put your candles, with the wicks still tied or wrapped around their holders, on a cookie sheet and place in a cold oven. Set the oven temperature to 250 degrees F and turn the oven on. Leave candles in for 30 to 45 minutes (you can check on them every so often if the oven door has a glass insert). Turn off oven, check to make sure that your wicks are still in the right place, and leave candles in the oven until completely cool. This candle making technique will not work with candles with embedded objects for obvious reasons, ie wax embeds will melt and make a mess, unsupported embeds will fall to the bottom of the candle, polymer clay embeds will produce yet more bubbles on being heated and may also “craze”. Now for the final way to get rid of unwanted bubbles —- cover your candles to keep out dust and store, making sure to keep them upright and level. That’s it! Over time the bubbles will disappear on their own. If you are planning on giving your candles as gifts or selling them and you don’t want bubbles, just make them up at least a couple of months ahead of time. Of course, this also means that you don’t want to make up an awful lot of candles that look best with lots of bubbles and then just let them sit around or you could end up, for instance, with lots of “flat” champagne candles.