Egg candles

Here is another use for cleaned-out eggshells, egg shaped candles.
It's a little harder to get the egg out of the shell for these, because it helps not to have a bottom hole in the egg. I tried it with the blown eggs, by putting a piece of tape over the bottom hole to keep the wax from pouring out the bottom, but it didn't work. The hot wax came out around the edges of the tape.

To prepare the eggshells for this project, I made a single hole in the top (narrow part) of the egg and used a short bamboo skewer to break the yolk, so it would come out easier. Then I shook the contents of the egg into a bowl, so I could use them to make French Toast. Next, the shells were rinsed out with water and set aside to dry.

Yesterday, in preparation for Earth Hour, I used the shells to make candles that Blaze and I could decorate.

I started off using the rest of the soup can of paraffin from last week's pressed flower candle and added some beeswax to it, but the candles made with the wax mixture stuck to their shells terribly. In the end, I was able to remove all the shell, but it took a lot of picking at them. The ones that I made after that, with just beeswax, peeled beautifully with no trouble at all.

For pouring the wax, I made a funnel out of thin cardboard and I placed the eggshells back in the egg carton, so they would sit upright.



After the wax was poured, I stuck a wick in each shell and held it in place with a pair of short skewers (tooth picks would work also). I found that it was easiest to position the wick, if I dipped it in wax first, like the beginning of a "dip candle" and blew on it until it stiffened straight.



I set the candles in the refrigerator for a while to set-up and then peeled them like hard cooked eggs.
I have made these candles before, once when I was a teenager, and once when my girls were little, and I think it is inevitable that one egg in every bunch will have something wrong with it and not look as nice as the rest, so plan the number of eggshells accordingly.



Then Blaze and I decorated the eggs with moldable beeswax.



Two of the finished candles:



Blaze's room during Earth Hour:




Playing with the rainbow filter again:



We had such an enjoyable hour without power last night, that Blaze didn't want to turn the lights back on at the end of it. We played Uno and I read aloud The Golden Egg and the next chapter of Happy Times in Noisy Village. A thunder storm started during that hour, as well, so we spent part of the time watching the rain and lightening out Blaze's bedroom window.
The storm turned out to be a really violent one, that lasted most of the night. We did need the rain, but around 2:30 I told DH that I was no longer thinking how nice it was that the garden was getting this water, and had started worrying that all our little plants would wash away into the lake across the road.
It's not raining now, but everyone else in the apartment is still asleep and I haven't been out to check on the garden yet.