This was such a fun craft! It served three purposes... Number one, they are just adorable and fun. Number two, Nina had to do a mother-daughter project for young womens and we both liked them. Number three, Nina needed a recycling project for school.
We not only recycled the bottles and bottle caps, we melted old broken crayons in a can... both items that would have gone into the garbage.
Buying candle wicks can be expensive, but tea light candles are cheap! I think I paid $3 for 100 of them and they've lasted me forever. I removed the metal cup and wick from the tea lights and melted the wax with the crayons.
To melt the wax, place your empty metal can in a saucepan of water. Fill the can with your broken crayons and bits of wax. I have a saucepan I use just for wax purposes. There are a lot of fun things you can do with candles! Get the water boiling/simmering and the wax melts quickly.
I know I've raved about my love for bottle cap projects before, and these are no different! Place your bottle caps on a paper plate and place a wick with metal bottom still attached into each cap.
Use a plastic spoon to stir the wax until smooth and fill each cap with wax. You could use a metal spoon instead, but then you're picking wax off of it. A good quality plastic spoon wont melt and then you can throw it away. Place the plate of candles in the fridge to hurry them along if you like. In the fridge they set in less than 5 minutes. Trim the wicks, if desired.
There are many ways you could display the candles, but I thought putting them back on the bottles was super cute! We all got fun soda pops in our Easter baskets and didn't know they'd end up being a fun centerpiece!
Once your candles are cooling I dare you to not play in the wax! It feels so good dipping your fingers into the warm liquid wax and then letting it dry. We picked it all off our fingers and had a pile of blue fingers on the counter! The awesome thing is you just throw it back in the can for another day. It's a great lesson on how wax changes from a liquid to a solid. This is just all in all a great project to do with your older kids!
I can totally envision these on a dessert buffet table or on tables as centerpieces at a wedding or reception. I LOVE the look of vintage soda pop!
2 comments:
This will be one of our summer fun projects. Thanks so much for sharing
These look really cute! I love the look of the bottles, too. I'm wondering how sturdy the caps sit on top of the bottles. Did you anchor them down at in any way? If the table was bumped,I would hate for them to fall off the bottle with a flame going, and have liquid wax get all over the tabletop/cloth.
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