How to Make Your Own Candles
Candle making is not only easy to do, but is also a great deal of fun. Various candle-making kits and equipment are available from craft shops, but by following these handy tips More »
Toy Boxes – De-Clutter the Bedroom
With children’s room, you’ll often find that despite your bests efforts, it’s still a real challenge to prevent them from being filled up with toys and such. Even if you ask that More »
How to Make Your Own Candles
Candle making is not only easy to do, but is also a great deal of fun. Various candle-making kits and equipment are available from craft shops, but by following these handy tips you can create beautiful candles with minimal hassle and expense.
Firstly, it is advisable to use newspaper to protect your surfaces against spillages. Akin to melting chocolate, you need to break up the wax, whether it be soy wax, beeswax or paraffin wax, and melt the pieces in a bowl placed over a boiling pan of water. As wax can ignite when overheated, do not melt the wax directly over a naked flame. For coloured candles, add a drop of colouring agent, and for scented candles simply add a few drops of your favourite essential oil.
Place a wick into your selected mould, ensuring that you leave a few centimetres of excess at the top for lighting the finished candle. Wrap the top end around a peg and lay this across the top of the mould to hold the wick in place. Carefully pour the melted wax into the mould. Air bubbles get trapped in the wax, so every few hours you need to break the skin on the top of the candle with a fork to release the bubbles. The wax will then sink as the air is removed, so top the mould back up with more melted wax.
Leave your candles to set for up to twelve hours then transfer them to the fridge for another twelve hours. When the wax has completely set, you can tap the candle out of the mould and trim the wick to about half a centimetre in length. Always leave your candles to sit for another twenty-four hours before lighting them.
Don’t be put off if you think it’s going to be a lot of effort – candle making is far simpler than you would expect it to be.
Toy Boxes – De-Clutter the Bedroom
With children’s room, you’ll often find that despite your bests efforts, it’s still a real challenge to prevent them from being filled up with toys and such. Even if you ask that your child clears everything up directly after they play with their things, the problem won’t be fixed unless there’s a specific place that they can put everything. When you think about it, it makes sense. For example, you might ask that a corner of the room should be where they put all of the toys that they’re not playing with. When Christmas or their birthday comes around and that pile gets a bit bigger, how long will it be before that all spills out to the middle of the room? Dedicated toy storage is your best way to prevent these problems from coming about.
You can get all sorts of different forms of toy storage, but the most common ones tend to be the old traditional toy box. It really depends on your personal tastes and that of your children, as to the choice that you’re going to opt for. Oftentimes, you’ll find that the old methods are usually the most effective, but it might depend on the way that your child’s bedroom is set out. For example, some might find that it will be more effective if they put the toys on shelves above head height, so that they’re less of them on the ground.
One of the great things about some of the toy boxes that you can find from established children’s furniture retailers like GLTC is that they can be stacked on top of each other. This means that you can double the amount of storage without really taking up much space in the room, as it will all be confined to the same corner of the room. Having this sort of storage will make it far easier for your children to care for their things and put them away at the end of the day, because they will have a specific place where they are meant to go, rather than just a region of the room.
