Busy weekend...

I am not able to post any pictures at the moment. I will soon. I took another class taught by Jill Cardinal. Oh my goodness!!! It was pure alchemy; potatoes, ink, crayons, paper bags and bee's wax. I am just totally excited about this. I LOVE reusing/repurposing stuff that would otherwise get recycled or tossed.
Also this weekend I made about 14 candles. These are soy candles in glass jars with lids. I used vanilla fragrance (synthetic) for half of them. The other half was scented with orange and clove essential oil. Earlier I had made some vanilla essential oil and orange essential scented ones. The amount of vanilla essential oil it took was a bit cost prohibitive so I opted to try the synthetic. The vanilla ones turned out fine. I really like the orange clove scented ones, they smell very holiday-ish and festive to me. I will be buying some more wax today and some more jars. I am also going to playing around with some more oil combinations. I was thinking a chai scented blend and a fir citrus blend might be nice. These are to sell at our craft fair. I am busy making yarn wreaths inspired by Katie. I have a lot of velvet leaves and birds and nests and flowers. These are mainly for gifts though I may have a few to spare to sell.
I am trying to use up things that I already have in my studio, but it seems that for everything that I already have I need to purchase something else to make the ideas work. Rather frustrating on the frugality crafting front. However, I have scored some amazing clothing finds very frugally. I have had an aversion for years to going to thrift stores for clothes. Dishes, books, the odd whatcamacallit-no problem. Clothes for some reason have been a no go for me, until two weeks ago. I went to one of the local St Vincent's looking for cookie trays to use to catch wax when I pour the candles. I had to walk through the clothing section to get to the housewares area. I grabbed a long gored corduroy skirt, an argyle sweater, a pale pink corduroy jacket and a vest all practically brand new and a Pyrex casserole (for my friend Karen) for under 20 bucks! (Clothing was half off that day.) Since then I have scored a brown velvet jacket much like the one in the Boden catalog that I lusted after mightily last year. It is a tiny bit too big but definitely workable and it is warm. It is a gorgeous chocolate brown color. Pictures soon...