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Soy wax and cocoa butter candles

After the  Choco soap  experience, I've decided to try cocoa butter in candles (75% w/w of soy wax and 25% w/w cocoa butter). I thought the color would look amazing and very natural, and the scent of cocoa butter delicate and pleasant. I have tried, for glass jars of the same size, a cotton wick or a wood wick. Couple of remarks : 1) the wax/butter mix takes forever to cool down (very low melting point of cocoa butter) 2) Lot of frosting and shrinking (see pics below) I let the candles set for several days and then proceeded with the burning test . Here you can see pictures taken at 1, 30, 90 minutes after burning. To be honest, the candles burned very slowly and I couldn't smell the chocolate scent of cocoa butter. The wood wick behaved better than the cotton wick, nevertheless none of the two burned large enough to form a full burning pool after several hours (a lot of tunneling!!!). Take home message : I don't think it's
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Card making magazines (Easter Edition)

It happened again! At the beginning of March, I managed to get two card making magazines with plenty of gifts !!! Here  you can find the blog post on the bumper packs I got just before winter holidays. But let's go back to the new ones! Bargain number one is the ‘Make amazing cards’ bumper pack which contains: a project magazine, designer papers, decoupage sheets, 15 clear stamps , 2 embossing folders and more. The stamp set is too cute and came in handy for Easter cards :-)   Bargain number two is the ‘Rose and cute bunnies Make Special Cards’ bumper pack which has a 52-pages magazine, 9 cards + envelopes in 3 different shades, 25 clear stamps and patterned papers.   I find the shades of the cards very Easter-ish!   I think I'll use some of the flowers in this stamp set for mom's day cards... :-) Here some cards I made by picking elements from both packs
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Choco soap

I haven't been making soap in months!!! I thought I wouldn't remember, but it's like riding a bike: you never forget.  The initial plan was to test a recipe with 15% cocoa butter , to make an in-the-pot swirl and some piping on the top. Total oil weight:  800 gr Water as % of oil weight: 28 % Superfat: 7% Water:Lye Ratio 2:1 Fragrance/e.o.: NONE Soaping temperature: Oils @ 62 °C, Lye @ 65 °C Mica: Hot Chocolate ( swirl and flowers on the top*) *the flower plan failed, see below :-/ OIL/FATS Olive Oil (pomace) 25 % Palm Oil 25 % Coconut Oil, 76 deg 25 % Cocoa Butter 15 % Castor Oil 5 % Almond Oil, sweet 5 % Everything went well with the in-the-pot swirl!  On the other hand, the brown-colored batter I left in the pastry bag has become pretty thick and I couldn't pipe the flowers on the top of the soap... when I squeezed the bag the batter clogged the piping tip... I gave up with the piping and put the soap to rest overnight.
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Card making and papercraft magazines

Last month I had the chance to get, for the first time, a couple of Cardmaking & papercraft  magazines: Papercraft Inspirations and Make Christmas card magazine. Papercraft Inspiration December issue had a Christmas window build-a-scene embossing folder and stamp free gift, as well as  free festive papers . Make Christmas cards was offering:  2 embossing folder borders ,  13 stylish stamps ,  32 Christmas papers ,  12 découpage sheets ,  117 toppers & motifs and  73 festive greetings. Here you have some of the cards and tags I've made with the magazines' gifts All cards have been donated to hospitals 
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Festive cards

This is the first batch of festive cards I made! 🎄🎅  With few exceptions, I went for very simple cards. I used unconventional colors (blue, pink, brown), minimal details (no sentiments, few glitters), and definitely unusual paper themes 🤣 For a touch of originality, I thought about cards with  trees entirely  made of rhinestones  For the following cards instead, I have mixed and matched the complementary parts of the trees obtained with the Sizzix DECORATIVE TREE thinlits die set Last but not least, here you have classic festive cards with the reds and greens and some sparkle 😊
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