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Showing posts from August, 2016

Mini candles sample pack

This is a sample pack with five different mini candles. From left to right: Candle #1:  b ees wax: coconut oil (80:20)  + cotton wick (lead free)  +  cinnamon candle fragrance Candle #2:  b ees wax: coconut oil (70:30)  + cotton wick (lead free)  +  coffee bean candle fragrance   Candle #3: 100% Soy wax + wooden wick + strawberry cream candle fragrance   Candle #4 : bees wax:coconut oil (70:30) + cotton wick (lead free)  + lavender candle fragrance   Candle #5: b ees wax: coconut oil (70:30)  + cotton wick (lead free) + l emongrass essential oil Each candle has been poured in a mini marmalade glass jar, carefully labeled (safety first!) and wrapped by me. Candle pouring Burning instructions on the bottom and labels with ingredients list Box making 

Homemade soap boxes

I love making soap with the cold process and, every now and then, I like to give some soap samples to friends and family . So far, I've been always wrapping the soap slices in a brown craft paper. Now that I have the envelop punch board (EPB) I want to create nice boxes to accommodate the soap. Yes, you got it right! I have the envelop ,   not the box, punch board but I've found an amazing on-line calculator that allows you to create any box you want (within certain size limits!) by using the EPB!!! That's today's work! ;-) First thing first, I carefully measured the soap slices, decided the box dimensions (70 x 60 x 25 mm) and run the calculator. The calculator provided me with the paper size and the exact position of the first and second punch on the first edge of the paper in order to obtain a box of the required dimensions. (you also have the option in inches) Then I punched and scored the paper accordingly and rounded the box c

Housewarming card

A housewarming card for a friend! Most of the materials used for this card come from the last order I've placed at Crafts-inspain : Sizzix butterfly embossing folder Dovecraft 6 x 6 Scrapbook paper  Garden Party  10mm Polka dot orange organza ribbon  Wooden purple & white polka dot flower embellishments  I've used the garden party s crapbook paper for the base of this  card. I've cut out a white-ish cardstock of the same width as the scrapbook paper but only 3/4 as high, embossed it and glued it on the front of the card. I've used the polka dot organza ribbon to 'mask' the junction between the two papers I've looked for house templates on the internet, found this cute one and printed it on white- ish cardstock. I've trimmed the borders of the house and ink-stamped some bushes with a mini rubber stamp + VersaColor mint green (#40) and tropical green (#105) inks.  I've cut out the card in the middle o

Looking for a great on-line craft shop?

How do I choose an on-line craft shop over another? The interaction with the customer is very important to me! And of course the shipping costs , which are often the bottleneck of the situation, are an important issue as well! There are plenty of on-line craft shops !  Some of them belong to renowned brands, some are just retailers of famous brands and some other (like most of the shops on e b a y ) are managed by private sellers/users.  I like to buy from small sellers, and I recently found an  e b a y  shop called Crafts-inspain   which I think is really interesting. Pros: a pretty good choice of products  great prices reasonable shipping costs for EU customers (the shop is based in Spain) combined postage available sales promotions and/or items with reduced prices often available fast shipping times  quick reaction of the seller when contacted Cons: maybe the only one, is that you can't immediately find the latest products from major brand

Candle swirls: my Achilles heel!

I tried to make swirls many many times... of course without succeeding! I don't know whether this time I can be satisfied with the result, but at least I prepared some nice candles that a french friend described as 'des morceaux  de ciel' (literally 'bits of sky' ). How to do this? Once I've seen a video (or maybe it was a blog/webpage) in which someone was using the following technique but with many colours all at the same time. 1) Melt and pour plain (no colours, some fragrance if you fancy it) soy wax in your containers 2) when the wax is firm, make some holes with the help of a wooden  skewer  or anything pointy. Holes should be as close as possible to the container's walls, and should be running along 3/4 of the candle. 3) drop some candle-specific liquid colour in the holes  4) heat  the container's wall  with a heat gun or a hair dryer. This will partially melt the wax allowing the colour to blend in.

Limeflower & fig soap AKA 'Vertical waves'

I had some oil left overs and I wanted to try my first swirled soap! This recipe contains Olive Oil (44%), Palm Oil (28%), Coconut Oil (8%), sweet Almond Oil (13%), Castor Oil (5%) and Avocado Oil (2%). Because of the low content in coconut oil and high content of liquid oils this soap bar should be quite soft and not too aggressive in terms of cleaning properties. The fragrance  ' limeflower & fig '  is from The Soap Kitchen (ref: 13730pmd). I've used 1.5 gr of fragrance for 1.127 Kg of total material (oils + water + NaOH). The amount of fragrance is fairly small but it still provides a  pleasant scent . Mica: blueberry from The Soap Kitchen (see  HERE  for a complete overview of my pigments' list) Dried flowers: cornflower petals and white rose buds warning: cornflower petals discolour in CP soap (see 'before and after' pictures below) while they retain their vibrant blue in M&P soap (see  HERE  and  HERE )