I promised, so here it is!

Like I said...I was doing some crafty stuff for Valentine's Day <3 Well, now that everyone got their presents, I can go ahead and post what I've been doing!

I am part of a Riding Club called the Chic Riders of Washington, you can check us out here:

   ---> http://www.chicriderswashington.com

I love being apart of this amazing group of women.  We try to give back to our local communities as much as possible and I love us for it.  We have monthly meetings and this one just so happened to fall right before Valentine's Day so I decided to make them all a little Valentine to let them know that I love them.

I know we are all addicted to Pintrest, and I have seen a few ideas on there, as I'm sure most of you have too, that I wanted to try out.

Homemade Candles is the first thing that I wanted to do.  I don't have a link to any specific post or blog from where I found the idea.  It was a few all bunched into one project.

What you need:

Modge Podge - $6.99 I purchased the 4oz Gloss and have enough left over to do a whole bunch more.

Candle Wax - $19.99 large block made 11 candles.

Wicks - $3.99 for 12 I think you can make the wicks yourself, I just didn't want to.

11 Mason Jars - $2.20 I found mason jars at the Thrift Store for .20 each. (SCORE!!)

Food Coloring - $0.00 I had this.

Essential Oil - $3.99 I chose Lilac
Small paintbrush or foam -$1.99

Pan -$2.99 from the thrift store, I didn't want to ruin one of my pans! 

I went ahead and washed the mason jars and let air dry.  I was really unsure of this whole process, so there was some trial and error involved which I will share.

After the jars were all dry and ready to go, I set into my little candle making project. The cupcake holder was to mix the Modge Podge and food coloring in, it seemed to work really well.

So I don't have any fancy measurements, I just squeezed some in and added food coloring to what I thought would be good enough.  Sorry...next time I'll get that info.  I will tell you I ended up using 2oz of Modge Podge and I probably could have gotten away with only using one.  I ended up throwing away a little, to much of my disappointment.  

I totally spaced taking a picture of the first layer, sorry.  I will tell you that I just glopped it on the inside starting with the bottom of the jar and then working the brush strokes up from the bottom.  Not knowing much about this, I let it sit overnight to dry.  After it was done drying I have to say, I was a little disappointed in myself.  The color was really faint, which is fine really, but I wanted to make more of an impact.  Another thing that was disappointing is that I didn't brush on the mixture evenly enough.  There were places that barely had any color and places that had a whole bunch.  I thought "hey...why can't I thin out some of this with some water" brilliant right?  Well it actually was. I thinned out most of the jars and when it dried I was a lot happier with what it looked like, but I still didn't think it had enough color. 

At this point I knew I was going to have to do another layer.  This time I added just a little bit of water to thin things out a bit and mixed some green and blue food coloring together.  This is the final product ready to sit and dry.  Looking at it, I was simply overjoyed thinking I've got the right thing going and the color is going to be awesome....I let the jars sit upside down for about half an hour and then flipped them so they were right side up for about the same time.  After these dried they were really nice looking, but I still wanted a little more color so I decided to do just one more layer and then call it a day.  This time using just blue.

I am going to ask you to learn from my mistakes.  Make sure you use even strokes and make sure it's not goopy in some places and thin in others.  I like that they don't look perfect (if that makes sense) but they did not turn out exactly as I had hoped, though they are still pretty cute and I was extremely proud of myself when I was done. 

Once I knew the jars were good to go and I was ready to put some wax in them it was pretty simple.  I cut the block of wax into smaller pieces so they would melt faster.  Once the wax was melted I added in the essential oil right before I was ready to pour.  Again...not rocket science here, I didn't measure how much I used, but I can tell you I used half the little bottle of oil. So about .15 fl oz. Boy did my house smell good :)

Finished product, I love these girls and I want them to know it.

 What's in the bag with the candle.  You can't make a Valentine without some goodies!

And the finished candle.  See...still cute, but not exactly what I wanted.  Another helpful hit, fill your jar of choice full in the first go around.  I didn't and had to go back and add some wax, and in doing so, it bubbled up a bit.

Valentine Bags -$1.98 (.99 for 10, bought 2)
Candy Knecklace -$1.98 (.99 for 10, bought 2)
Ghirardelli Chocolates -$3.99
Conversation Hearts -$.99
Heart containers -$.99

Total cost of the project for 11 people -$45.88 which works out to be $4.17 per gift....I'm ok with that :)