I was mak­ing some sleep and relax­ation balms and salves as gifts. Part­ly also because I want­ed to start mak­ing my own lip balm because the EOS stuff I’m using seems to make my lips peel…? Very annoying. 

Any­way, after doing much research and com­par­ing recipes, because I also don’t want to invest in a lot of mate­r­i­al to start (and essen­tial oils tend to be a bit cost­ly), I bought some basic mate­r­i­al and made some sol­id per­fume kind of balm, and a salve for heels as well. 

For the sol­id per­fume, I used one part beeswax and one part extra vir­gin olive oil. The olive oil we just always have for cook­ing, and the beeswax I got it from the Bee Shop, from local bee keepers. 

For the first batch I used:

• 2 tbsp of beeswax
• 2 tbsp of olive oil
• Melt­ed the beeswax and oil in a dou­ble boil­er (which is a mason jar in a pot of sim­mer­ing water over medi­um heat)
• After it all melt­ed I mixed in 15 drops of laven­der oil and 10 drops of cedar­wood oil
• Dis­trib­uted in clean small con­tain­ers (tiny jam sam­ple jars and David’s Tea tins!) — I filled 2.5 con­tain­ers, and then made a bit more fol­low­ing the same beeswax to olive oil ratio to make 4 containers.

This sleep balm proves to real­ly work for sleep, applied to the tem­ples and soles of feet before bed. My friend and I both tried it and it worked! So If you have trou­ble sleep­ing I’d sug­gest giv­ing it a try! I tried it as a lip balm but it did­n’t go on very well.

I then made some salves for heels, because I was giv­ing it to some­one who does­n’t like strong scents. It has less laven­der, and has coconut oil. I used:

• 3 tbsp coconut oil
• 3 tbsp extra vir­gin olive oil
• 1 tbsp beeswax
• Melt­ed the oils and beeswax togeth­er in dou­ble boiler
• Once all melt­ed, added 10 drops of laven­der oil and 5 drops of cedar­wood oil
• Dis­trib­uted in 4 small containers

So I did some exper­i­men­ta­tion on myself with this salve. It works well on the heels, but not so great on the lips or face, as it is quite greasy-feel­ing. I think it’s also great for dry hands and it smells great. I think maybe this is why a lot of lip balm recipes call for shea but­ter or cocoa but­ter. I’ll give that a try when I have a chance to go to the health food store. 

Also, I only bought a 175g block of beeswax and I still have more than half left! It goes a long way.

Hap­py weekend!

I’ve always been fas­ci­nat­ed by glass, espe­cial­ly the kind of small glass sculp­tures or beads where a form or swirls of colours are enclosed in clear glass. It’s like a world unto itself. I’ve been want­i­ng to take flame­work­ing class­es for a long time, but did­n’t quite have the mon­ey or the time. In the begin­ning of the year I decid­ed to make time to do some­thing I want­ed, and remem­bered that years ago I bought this small pen­dant of a jel­ly fish encased in a drop of clear glass from a local artist. So I looked her up, and found that she offers class­es at a stu­dio not too far from me, at quite a rea­son­able rate! Excit­ed, I signed up right away.

And these are my very first batch of beads!

To be com­plete­ly hon­est, half way through the first class I had the thought that it was a bad idea after all and I should just leave, because I was so uncom­fort­able with open flames, and the glass was­n’t melt­ing the way it should because I was­n’t hold­ing it in the right spot in the flame, I was ter­ri­fied of the glass or the torch explod­ing or me doing some­thing stu­pid and catch­ing on fire (vivid imag­i­na­tion some­times is a hin­der­ance to learn­ing), and I could­n’t see prop­er­ly because I was wear­ing these gog­gles on top of my glass­es… but towards the end of the class I seemed to have got­ten the hang of mak­ing round beads. I made three prop­er ones (the 3 green/clear donut-shaped ones on the left — the teacher made the small opaque green one as demo, she just let me keep it :D), and one of them I made into a neck­lace right away when I got home :D

The next class we tried mak­ing dif­fer­ent shapes and adding sculp­tur­al com­po­nents. That snowflake is a bit sad-look­ing but it was fun to try.

If you’re in the city and would like to give flame­work­ing a try, check out the nano­pod stu­dio! (that’s me con­cen­trat­ing very hard in the plaid shirt)

On a relat­ed note, I saw an image of a bead­ed death’s head hawk moth one day, and decid­ed that I want­ed to make a bead­ed moth. So I looked up bead embroi­dery, found this very help­ful tuto­r­i­al, and tried just mak­ing a test one on felt, with the beads I have on hand.

I found it a bit dif­fi­cult to keep to the exact shape I drew on the felt, the wings are more round­ed than I intend­ed, but it may get bet­ter with prac­tice. Next time I’ll get more moth-like colour beads and try anoth­er design.

Hope every­one have a good week!

Our decor is pret­ty min­i­mal this year but it does­n’t mean that it’s any less fun!

I was hop­ing to replace the paper flower wreath on our apart­ment door (which cov­ers up a half-peeled/­dis­in­te­grat­ing Neigh­bour­hood Watch stick­er), and I’ve been want­i­ng to make a pom pom wreath, but I know that I would­n’t have time to make all the pom poms. While brows­ing at Michaels I saw this giant, the most fluffy pipe clean­er, so I thought I’d try twist­ing it into a wreath! 

At first I was just going to twist it into a sim­ple, round wreath, with mush­rooms made of wine corks that I’ve been sav­ing for that pur­pose. But then I thought, what if the wreath has arms? What if it’s a wreath-shaped crea­ture? So the fluffy wreath with its mush­room friends were born :D

I’m only show­ing a close up of the wreath right now because these friends deserve their own post, so stay tuned! :D

(The wreath end­ed up on the wall inside the apart­ment because I could­n’t bear to leave them on the out­side of our door in the hallway)

The left over pipe clean­er turned into a tiny Christ­mas tree :D with a very excit­ed Totoro.

But we still need­ed some­thing fes­tive on our door. So I final­ly made the delight­ful plum pud­ding pom pom from Fleur Berna­dine! There are a num­ber of plum pud­ding pom pom tuto­ri­als out there, but I love that this one incor­po­rates a but­ton at the top. 

The fluffy plum pud­ding cer­tain­ly brings some hol­i­day cheers to the cur­rent­ly very grim-look­ing hall­way, which is cur­rent­ly under­go­ing ren­o­va­tion (please excuse the poor lighting).

I don’t have a pom pom mak­er so I made one with card­board using this tuto­r­i­al, which is very handy with tem­plates for dif­fer­ent sizes of pom poms. But it turns out to be quite chal­leng­ing (per­haps because it was my first time try­ing to use a home­made pom pom mak­er and I had dull scis­sors). Maybe I’ll invest in a pom pom mak­er. Just think about all the pos­si­bil­i­ties that pom poms can make! Pom pom ani­mals, pom pom fruits, pom pom wreath…

Mer­ry craft­ing! :D

Came across a book on mak­ing jew­el­ry with hard­ware store mate­r­i­al one day, was curi­ous about what peo­ple make with hex nuts, and spent an evening look­ing at all the dif­fer­ent hex nut tuto­ri­als. Espe­cial­ly love this bril­liant ear­ring idea from Cafe Craftea.

Final­ly went to Cana­di­an Tire on my lunch break one day and picked up the small­est hex nuts I could find.

I sim­ply glued the hex nut onto a 4mm ear­ring post with some E6000 and let it cure over night. Very sim­ple. Made a pair with­out glit­ter because I like the slight­ly steam­punk look :D

And for the glit­ter ear­rings, I glued the hex nuts onto the ear­ring posts like the plain ones, then I filled the hex nuts with a bit of glit­ter nail pol­ish with the help of a tooth­pick. Once the nail pol­ish is dried, I applied a lay­er of Mod Podge Dimen­sion­al Mag­ic to seal it, also with a toothpick.

Quite hap­py with how they turned out :D

Have a good week­end everyone!