Make-It Monday (on a Tuesday) Recycled Wax Tart Melts

 I love those scented wax tart melts.  Awhile back I found an EBay shop that makes homemade palm wax tart melts and they smelled heavenly.  I think they smelled just as good or better then the popular Yankee Candle brand.  I used them so much that I knew that I would have to keep ordering them. At the rate that I was melting my wax tarts, it was going to get pricey. There had to be a better way! Then I realized that I could do this myself,  and I did!  Every time I would melt one, I would save the wax.  I just put it all in a Gallon sized zip lock and stored it away and recycled it to make new tart melts.


This is what you will need:

A sauce pan for melting the wax on the stove.  Don't use one of your good sauce pans or pots that you use for cooking, because you will not want to use this pot again!  I picked up a two dollar used one at a thrift store and use it specifically for my wax tart melts.







A mold for the wax.  I used a Wilton heart shape candy mold. This mold comes with two molds, each has 8 hearts -16 total. These molds are cheap and it's easy to pop the tarts out because it's plastic and flexible. I got mine at Michaels.

Parchment paper or wax paper.  





Fragrance oil. You can use any fragrance oil scent that you like.  (I also got this from Michaels.) However, keep in mind that the used wax will still have a little fragrance left, so you will need a similar fragrance or one that will compliment what little fragrance is left over in the used wax.



Directions:

1) Lay out parchment paper and put molds on top.  (Pouring the wax into the molds can be really messy. The parchment paper makes it easy to clean up any spilled or dribbled wax.  Once it has hardened, just scrape it off or push it off.  Don't throw it out. Save it for later, or melt it right away. As you can see from the picture, I did not use parchment or wax paper. Big Mistake! I had a tough time trying to get the wax out of my grout! So use the paper, it will save you a lot of time in the clean up process!)


2) Melt used wax on the stove.


3) Once the wax is melted, turn down the heat, and add desired amount of fragrance using a medicine dropper.  It's up to you how much you want to use. I used Cinnamon Sticks and Apple Cinnamon - 12 mls of each for my amount of wax.

4) Pour wax into molds. Wait for wax to harden and then pop them out of the molds.

Now you have recycled wax tart melts, and a very nicely, scented kitchen, I might add - it was great!
You can do this over and over.  Next time I'm going to start from scratch with new wax and food coloring, and I want try other scents. Can't wait!

MAKE-IT MONDAY / MASON JAR PIGGY BANKS

I really wanted to have a chore and "you did a great job" incentive for my girls, especially for the two younger ones.  So I started thinking of ways to motivate them to clean-up, make their beds, to be good girls, and to not be brats in the grocery store, etc....  And I thought.  Hmmmmm. They really love to go to the Dollar Store every once in awhile to pick out little treats.  Yes! That's it! They need to earn that trip!  But how would they earn a trip to the dollar store?  Then it came to me! They could earn dimes. (I know,  it's 2012 not 1912!) My 5 year old will be starting kindergarten in August and we have been doing a lot more "Homework" to get her ready - that's why I started thinking about dimes, counting by tens and the concept of money.  For my 3 year old, it will simply just be for counting up to 10 and beyond.  Every Sunday they can take out one dime for their "Tithe" - offering at Sunday School - and once they have earned $1, we  can take a trip to the Dollar Store .  They can count out their dimes themselves, and pay for the items themselves, as well.  Can't wait to see it in action!

Here's how I made them.

I have so many mason jelly jars from my Mom's homemade Jelly's and Jams (the best in the world, by the way!) I chose three cute, smaller ones.

When I was looking for the tops and the rings for the jars, I found the 3 tops that I had saved from my friend's daughter's birthday party.  (The party favors were jars with cupcakes inside!) They were already painted black with chalk board paint and I thought that looked cuter than the plain tops. (It's easy to do.  Just buy a small jar of chalkboard paint and paint the tops!)


I then wanted to decorate them, but I needed to keep it simple so that we could unscrew the lids to open the jars for our trip to the dollar store. I just used twine, ribbon, scrapbooking paper (for the tags) and stickers for their initials.  A hot glue gun will come in handy to glue down everything. Then I used a screwdriver to punch the hole in the top.  Just hold the screw driver with one hand and use a hammer to tap the top of the screw driver.  Super easy and really cute. We've been using them for about 4 days, and they really love them.  And, I am not getting any arguments when it's time to clean up! Woohoo!

PLAYROOM

                                                           

I am so excited to post pictures of my girls' playroom.  It has kind of been evolving for the past 6 months. Some things worked and some things didn't. First I painted the walls, with the help of my best friend Michela.  Then we had fun with Michela's Cricut Machine and photo laminater making letters for the alphabet wall and numbers for a big clock. Well, the clock lasted for awhile but then, just recently, I wanted to do something different with that wall.  Lately, my girls' artwork has been filling up the doors of my refrigerator.  I had to do something about it, and the artwork needed a proper display.  So, down came the clock and up went an art work display.  I love how it turned out. I reused the numbers from the clock,  and put them on the wall above the window in a line - 1 through 10.  It's cute to watch my 3 year old look up there and start counting.  So here's the break down of what I did in the room.



THE ALPHABET WALL is my most favorite part of the play room.  I used the same paper throughout the whole room to keep the colors consistent.  Its just a tablet of scrapbooking paper.  I loved the colors and the patterns of this paper.  I found pics on line of many different alphabet walls.  Most of them used wooden letters or other types of heavy mediums to create letters.  It was all beautiful, but all the ideas were also really expensive to recreate.  So that's when I got the idea of using a Cricut machine to cut out different sizes of  letters.  This particular font has the letter with a slightly larger one behind it to give it a shadow effect.  I had fun picking out two different complimenting papers to make each letter.  Laminate, cut and attach the letters to the wall with Elmers Tack.  VIOLA! A beautiful art collage! The table is a $8 end table from IKEA, stools are from IKEA as well.  (We already had the pink chair - it went with an old little tykes kitchen.) The buckets and bar on the wall are also from IKEA.  They store all the crayons, colored pencils and markers - a great art station!




TOY STORAGE
We used the same scrapbooking paper that went on the wall for the alphabet and scrapbooking stickers to label each bin, an laminated the signs.  The signs are attatched with adhesive velcro.  This makes it easy to switch things around or to change the signs. The shelf and bins are from Target. (The labeling, creating, and the velcro idea was all my friend Michela's handiwork and ideas. She's a pro at organizing!)







PLAYROOM RULES
My friend Nicky, who is a talented Graphic Designer, typed up the Playroom Rules Subway sign for me.  I love this!  I dont even know who originally wrote these rules, but we saw this on a websight and we tweaked it a little to fit the needs of my family and then I sent it off to print. Easy shmeasy!  Yeah right! Only easy when you are my friend Nicky, because I could have never of done this on my own!

ART DISPLAY
This is the most recent addition to the playroom. This was really fun to make.  I painted plain wooden clipboards and wooden craft picture frames.  I saw this idea of using clipboards on a Pinterest search. and then tweaked the rest of it with my own ideas. I put each kids photo in the frames above their own clipboard and now I have a beautiful place to hang their artwork. The white wooden letters are from Micheals.  I used the Elmers Tack to hang the wooden letters and the picture frames. But the clipboards, being heavier needed nails- don't like nails in walls!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

I reused the numbers from the clock and put them over the window. Just cute and simple. The bunting banner is triangles cut from the same scrapbooking tablet and strung on yarn.  My goal is to crochet a bunting one of these days. The wreath was a hand made gift from my friend Nicky.  The word PLAY is strung in the inside. (Sorry the pic is so horrible.  It's from my phone.)

Shop closed for a few weeks

I have to say that I am very happy with my progres. So far, I have sold a total of 4 items and I am working on my last two orders. Not so shabby for a beginner entrepreneur! It's not a lot, but it's more than I had expected to accomplish. My little shop here on my blog will be closed for a few weeks. I am finishing up my last 2 orders and then I need to start working on my family's Christmas gifts. When I complete those projects I will be ready for business, once again, for the "made when ordered" items. If you would like for me to remember you, and you want to place a "ready when you are order" you can leave me a comment below and I'll personally get back to you when I'm ready to take orders.

Items for sale

Christmas is coming up soon! Yay!!! We love Christmas in my house.  This year I have decided to hand make all my gifts for my kids.  Santa will be bringing books & puzzzles and the such.  But who needs another barbie?!?!? Certainly not my girls.  We have tons of toys and do not need anymore - except for the cute dolls and amigurumi pets that I will be making for them.  But, those hand made gifts, that I will spend many sleepless hours crocheting, should mean a lot more than something off the shelf! I think that something that took time, energy, and love is worth way more than a flashy, plastic toy.

Keep an eye out this next week.  I will be adding a few more cute hats that will be for sale - a baby bear beanie, and an awesome,colorful earflap owl hat (Say that 5 times real fast!) So, check back! .

I love to Crochet

I started crocheting some time ago, and I love it! I am always thinking of my next project.  What is it going to be? How will it turn out? What colors will I use? Who will I give it to? Strangely, it often consumes my thoughts!  There have been many times when my Husband has to ask me to PUT IT DOWN so that I can concentrate on more important things.  I just get in the zone and sometimes it's hard to come out!

Something happened today that I never expected.  I took a little Hello Kitty hat, that I had just finished, with me to my weekly coffee break. We all sit around, drink coffee, eat goodies and a few of us crochet and knit.  It's been a wonderful time for me to socialize with my mommy friends and to indulge in a little adult conversation. (That is, as much as we can with 10 or more kids running around asking for goodies and drinks!) Anyway, I took this hat to show my friends my most recent project - my favorite one yet, and two of my friends asked me to make one for their daughters!  They even offered to pay me.  I then went home and  posted my most recent homemade creations to my facebook, and I had another friend ask me to make one for her daughter as well!  That's three orders in one day. Maybe I should get to crocheting!  I even promised my 3 little girls that they would get one as well!  This should keep me busy for awhile...

                             

"They're selling popcorn outside, and it's free!!!!"

On Saturday, we celebrated both Emery and Lily's birthdays.  We celebrated Emery is turning 4 on the 15th and Lily turned 2 on the 9th.  It was so much fun.  My favorite quote of the day came out of the mouth of Karlie Protivinsky.  She said "Hey guys! They're selling popcorn outside, and its FREE!" 

It was definitely the best birthday party we have had, yet.  The weather was perfect, I think it nearly reached up to 70 degrees. I think everyone had a great time. My good friend Jen, Karlie's mom, came out with all 5 of her children.  You may be thinking, so...what? A lot of people have 5 children.  Well, she just had triplets about three months ago, Luke, Elijah and Abram. And, all three of them just recently came home, one at a time. I am so proud of her! I was so happy to see them all, healthy, cute and happy. 

The day even got better when my Kyla informed me that she wants a birthday party just like this for her next birthday! I guess mommy did good.  It was a circus theme with a clown, bounce house and popcorn. We had a lot of fun. Enjoy the pics of my growing girls! SNIFF,  SNIFF....