Fantastical craft for kids

This is a wax fantasy. Every child — and adult — should make a wax fantasy at least once. It’s fun. It’s addicting. You’ll want to perfect your technique. You’ll experiment with new colors. And suddenly, every candle in your home is in danger of being melted.

Great Aunt Bernice taught my siblings and cousins to make wax fantasies. It’s a crowd-pleasing creative endeavor, I assure you. To get started, you will need:

Coffee can
Metal jar lids
Candles or blocks of wax
Stock pot
Water

Gather several old candles and place them in a large coffee can. Place the coffee can in a large pot of water.

Bring to a boil on the stove. As the water boils, the candles in the can will melt. That’s what you want: liquid wax.

While the wax is melting, gather your jar lids. This old jar is filled with lids collected my grandma for her sister Bernice. See “Bee” written in grandma’s script on the lid? These are special … and they’re old. When is the last time you saw the big jar of Miracle Whip priced at $1.37?

While the wax melts, fill the sink with cold water. I prefer to use an old wash tub in case of wax spills, but my sister is braver than I! The colder the better — this is what hardens the hot wax.

When the wax is melted, like this …

…. set out a few jar lids on your work surface. I recommend covering your countertops with newspaper in case of wax spills.

Adults, the next step is your job … pour hot wax from the coffee can into a jar lid. Fill it 3/4 full.

Little ones should be standing over the sink or tub of cold water. You’re going to carefully lift the jar lid and slowly dunk it in the water. This can be tricky … for young children, I suggest a parent does the dunking with little kids holding on to the parent’s forearms.

Older kids can do their own dunking … but caution them to go slowly. The wax is hot. A saving grace, however, is that ice cold water is a half-second away.

You can dunk straight down — slower is better because the wax will form a tall spire. You can also dunk it upside down. It’s a trickier technique, but with practice, it can produce some very tall, skinny and fantastical creations. Experiment and have fun!

This one was dunked upside down. As the hot wax hits the cold water, it instantly hardens. The creations are always unique.

Here’s a tip: leave the wax fantasy in the water for 20-30 seconds to properly harden all of the wax.

Seriously, this tops all of my previous fantasies and I will never be able to duplicate it. Isn’t it cool? Cinderella’s castle or a cupcake with birthday candle! I slowly dunked it straight down … stopping, then plunging further, very, very, slowly. The wax continued to bubble up through a tiny dot until finally, I dunked the entire thing.

You could jazz it up a bit by mixing colors of wax in the same pot and painting the lids.

This is a great anytime activity or a make-it-yourself gift for the kids to give away at Christmas.

Enjoy making wax fantasies.
You’ll create memories that will never be forgotten — and some day, repeated!