It was a bit of a first in many ways as I've not worked with paraffin wax before so spent some time coming to grips with it. First I had to figure out how to break off what I needed from one of the 2.5kg slabs of wax that I have ( I ended up bagging it and dropping it from shoulder height to the patio stones outside, as a knife just wasn't working for me. Lacked finesse but did get results!), then had to get to grips with melting it which took far longer than I'm used to with soy wax.
Having that all under control I got my wax stabilised at around 75C and got to dipping! Things to keep in mind for these...
1) Use a high melt temp wax, I'm using Candleshack 360S for these.
2) fill the water balloons with warm water, and don't overfill them.
3) I recommend using the water balloons rather than regular balloons as they seem more robust.
4) I kept my water balloons in a warm bowl of water to keep them at temp while I fiddled with the wax, make sure to dry them off before dipping however - water and wax don't mix!
5) have wax paper laid down in advance to place the balloons on.
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Back to my luminaries. My process was to dip the balloon in the wax for a few seconds and take it out and held it while it dried a bit, then dipped it back in again for a few seconds. I did this 5 times, then placed it on the wax paper. **note** the way you place the balloon on the paper is the shape it's going to set in, so take care how you place it. ** After the luminaries cooled some, I dipped them again in the wax 5 times and set back to cool. I kept doing this until I got a reasonable thickness to the walls.
Conclusions: I think next time I'll want to add a color, as although these white ones are nice I think they'd benefit from a bit of vibrancy. I also wonder if these would take to having pressed flowers embedded into them? Something to test! I also think I'll want to get a larger pot for dipping as my porridger pot is a tiny bit snug for these.
***edited to add***
Wanted to show just how good it looks all lit up, I love it !
Wow, these are very cool. I was curious what a water balloon luminaire when I saw your post on Craftsforum so I followed the link to your blog. The walls look very thick. Is the shell very heavy? I'm not a candle maker. I'm in the US and taking classes in school for metalworking and enameling. Billieanne
ReplyDeleteBillie: They're not terribly thick, I'd say probably about a quarter inch at the very most and that's being generous. It's pretty light overall. Good luck with your classes!
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