I’ve mentioned my fondness for spooky (aka candlelit) baths in various blog posts. I was therefore very happy when Père Noël brought me a wonderful child-assembled spooky bath kit, and Ruadhri a candle making kit.

My spooky bath kit!

The candles I generally use – supermarket scented tealights – never last very long. They’re not intended for longevity anyway, but the ones round the bath undergo some brutal experimentation and water torture at Ruadhri’s hands whenever he’s in the tub. He might be a little more kind and careful with the ones he makes. So after some geocaching exertion this morning, Rors and I set to in the kitchen this afternoon to turn out a first batch from his kit. It’s Kit Créatif’s ‘Bougies en Fête’ which I got from Amazon.fr.

Like most kits it suffers from small portions and vague instructions but we muddled through and Rors enjoyed himself. He was totally engrossed, checking the directions such as they were.

He helped assemble the moulds and put the wick in place, measured out the wax and then he stirred it while it melted very carefully and chose what colours to mix in. We put in a few drops of perfume too.

With meerkat assistance!

Getting the wax into the mould was the tricky bit. The moulds are very flimsy and the two sides don’t stick together very well. You have to have one person clamp the two sides together as hard as they can while someone else pours. In our case it was Caiti pouring and me holding and it was lucky I wore gloves! Not Caiti’s fault – well, not totally 😉 – it was a tricky procedure.

The whole thing is on the messy side so be warned!

We made three candles using the three moulds supplied and we’ve already got through half the wax and all the red colouring. See what I mean about the portions? But it was fun and if we decide to continue with the hobby once we’ve used everything up, I’ll invest in some silicon one-piece moulds.

We’ve just removed Ruadhri’s first candle, this rather lovely Christmas tree.

Meerkats again, and an exciting part of the film on TV which is why Rors won't smile at the camera!

And here it is burning beautifully and Christmasly.