Seasonal Crafts - rolled candles

This is one that I've seen around for a while and never thought to try. I have to say I was really surprised at how much fun it was, despite being very simple. The candle making kit is nothing more than sheets of colored beeswax and a long string of wick. 

We got the kit from A Toy Garden, but I know a few different "Waldorf-y" kinds of shops have them. The instructions suggest warming the sheets with a blow dryer, but I recommend using a handy sun-beam. It's much nicer, safer, more seasonal, and gives you the perfect excuse to sing some sun sings, as if you need an excuse!  ;-)  In case you needs some sun songs, there are a couple of books at the shop linked above, and some here - at Nova Natural, another favorite store for natural kids stuff. Our alltime favorite Sun Song though, is Sun-Hail by heathen bard Hilda. Here is her page, which I highly recommend to all heathen parents.

I'm glad I kept the wooden boxes from all the Melissa & Doug wooden toys we've gotten; even when we don't really needs the box to store the toy that came in it, they come in handy for projects like this one. Having the box to support the wax sheet while we carried, heated, and rolled it made things much easier for baby. The edges of the sheets are a little fragile and crumbly. First baby choose a sheet of wax, or 2 sheets if we wanted to make 2 colored candles. then she put the wax on the overturned box, and placed it in the sunbeam. While it warmed we measured and cut the wick. Then we stared by pressing the wick lightly into the wax, and folding the bottom edge up over it. I'd get the rolling started so it would proceed evenly, and we'd roll together, then seal the ends with a little crimping action, and press the seam down to seal it nicely. 

After we got a good routine down with making the candles we got fancy by adding decorating wax, also from the above vendors. Baby choose colors and cut out sh

apes with little wax cutters made just for this. I'd help pinch the stars into a more star-like shape as the cutter left them looking too much like little flowers. Then we'd stick them to the candles - just the warmth of our hands and very slight pressure was all it took. Easy! 

They came out looking pretty. We planned to give them as gifts, but we might keep at least a few of them, since we use so many candles - we always like to have one burning when we have a meal