Candles for bonfire night...

In keeping with our seasonal theme after the monster making Halloween workshop, we got making some candles on Saturday before we all headed out to see the fireworks.


We were creating cup-cake candles and teacup or container candles using two different kinds of wax and lots of interesting scent too. The chocolate candle scent made us all very hungry!

And you really do make the cup-cake candles like the real thing...well almost. You start off with a base cake and then have a whole lot of fun icing it with fluffed up wax 'frosting'. It's a very strange thing to whisk up the wax with a food mixer, but it really does become like proper icing. We did two batches, some white and some pink. And then went a bit wild with the glitter!

While waiting for the wax to cool on the cupcakes we started to melt the soy wax to fill our teacups. The all very important heat gun used to keep the wax nice and runny as it is poured from the metal jug and the thermometer is another super important instrument for monitoring the wax temperature. 

And here is the final result, with the wax nicely poured and cooling down, the chopsticks come in handy to help center the wick so there is no wonky burning candles once they are taken home.

So...anyone for a cup of tea and a fairy cake then? 

Meet the monster family...

Plenty of cups of tea helped along the making of this monster family at the end of October. They all turned out so fantastically well and not so scary...well the blanket stitch seemed a bit scary at first, but everyone mastered this in no time. 


There were some crafters that had to vamoose a bit earlier than the rest of the gang. The wee green and red monster below actually got made into a Christmas decoration, sacrilege! two days before Halloween, I tell you.   

And I think this cutie was going to get completed at home, then eventually end up in the mouth of a baby. Perfect! 

I really have to create a post workshop photo gallery so that we can see where everything ends up...


Some work in progress shots, and what perfect stitching...and stuffing...

And finally some close-ups of the completed creations, frankenstein eat your heart out...erm, well maybe not quite yet.

the making of a monster

This is my favourite time of year, especially around Halloween or the feast of Samhain and All Souls' Day. And to celebrate just a little this Saturday on October 29th we will be getting the needle and tread out to create miniature monsters and you never know we might even try apple dunking...and share a ghost story around a cup of brew...

Check out the details here if you want to come along. 

I'm so excited about this that I even created a one minute horror (ahem) animation...well more like attack of the killer pin cushions, or something along those lines. 

See how the wee orange guy got made by the hand of the creator.

My monster inspiration comes from many places but I can't help being inspired by these cardboard cut outs a friend gave to me all the way from California. They are aptly called Kamisabi - in Japanese it's the term for an item given a second life as a ghost. The paper comes from trimmings so they are recycled into a new life. They make me smile...

But the pincushions have the last word, in case you are interested to see the final scene of the animation, a bit like extreme acupuncture? eh...the poor thing