Advent - Day 7

[kyburg]

How to make a gift with something you have around the house. (Version 2.0)

Go collect all the candle stubs from the house. Ask your friends and family if they have some leftover from the Thanksgiving tables and what not.

Go to a lumber yard and ask for a trashbag of sawdust.

Then go thrift store shopping for a few items you won't mind trashing:

A kettle that you can put all the wax in, and then pour out of.
A set of muffin tins - the more bashed up, the better.
If someone donated an opened package of cupcake liners, sweet. Otherwise, find some on sale.

Go to the local cemetery (preferably right after a good wind) and find small pinecones or other seed pods (liquid amber trees are my favorite), and bring a bag of them home.

To assemble:

Find a place you can lay down newspapers and work without involving animals or small children. This is not a child's project.

Set out the muffin tins, line with the cupcake liners and fill with sawdust.

Carefully melt down the candle stubs in the kettle - one my oldest family friends who does this every year? Yup, caught the place on fire - even with all that experience. Be careful and don't get distracted.

Do not allow the wax to get too hot, and don't worry about the impurities like tabs or wixes - you can fish them out later.

Pour over prepared tins to soak the sawdust, but don't overfill. Top with a seedpod before it hardens - make nice-nice.

World's best firestarters. Good for anyone with a fireplace, earthquake kit or camping box. Take a brown paper sack and fill it up - use a rubber stamp to put some designs on the bag, then punch some holes near the top and close with a threaded piece of twine or string.

See you tomorrow!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

FYI - Burning pressure treated sawdust indoors can create a toxic cloud. Being repeatedly exposed to the same while outdoors can also kill, it just takes longer. Be aware the industrial locations are forbidden to burn pressure treated sawdust in anything but sealed furnaces, but they are allowed to dispose of the same sawdust as part of a standard trash collection.

[loveanddarkness.livejournal.com]

Distressing!

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

71.228.83.86
Record Type: IP Address

Comcast Cable Communications, Inc. JUMPSTART-5 (NET-71-224-0-0-1)
71.224.0.0 - 71.239.255.255
Comcast Cable Communications, Inc. WESTFLORIDA-6 (NET-71-228-64-0-1)
71.228.64.0 - 71.228.95.255

---

You know, I'm familiar with most of the wood used in construction these days being heat/chemically-treated. There's also been quite the hue and cry about it being overused - but in these applications, we're talking about a handful of 'anything' at a time, and in in all honesty - I see this application used more outdoors than anywhere else.

Care to factor in the lovely paraffin all by itself?

Login next time - but thanks for the two cents.

[murphymom.livejournal.com]

I learned a technique for making stencils using coloring book pages dipped in wax - I use an old electric frying pan(Teflon-coated0 that I bought at a thrift store for about $3 - no cord, but the particular brand of frying pan has a standard cord-transformer, so I use the one from my kitchen frying pan. Set on warm, it melts the wax nicely, and the thermostat keeps it from overheating.