Making Mini Jack-o-lanterns

We collected so many chestnuts over recent weeks that we’ve been able to do lots of different Autumn crafts. One of our favourite was making mini pumkins. My son loves pumpkins, they are his favourite thing this time of year. We wanted to try to cover chestnuts in wax to use in our crafts. We used chestnuts, wax and cocktail sticks to make some of our chesnuts into mini jack-o-lanterns.

We used hot wax. Please supervise all children if you do this.

To coat the chestnuts in orange, we needed a fair amount of wax. We made a mixture of candle wax and an orange crayon which we melted in an old jam jar in a hot pan of water. Then we put the wax pot  in a large plastic tub, we stuck cocktail sticks in the chestnuts, dipped them in the wax and set them on kitchen paper. 

Dipping the Chestnut in Orange Wax

Adding the Second Coat of Wax to the Chestnut

We found the wax gave a lovely smooth finish once dry, especially when we gave the chestnuts two coats.

Contrasting Chestnuts

Mini Jack-o-lantern waiting for a face

 

Then we drew faces on the chestnuts with a permanent marker. They look good enough to eat! Although this is a disadvantage when around small children, I‘m hoping they‘ll look less appetising as part of a candle or wall decoration.

Mini Jack-o-lanterns sitting in a row

Tip: when you take the cocktail stick out, twist it first so that it doesn’t take all the wax with it!

This can be quite dangerous as the wax is very hot. All children need supervision. With care and patience children learn many things about wax, shape and temperature. I loved the result and am looking forward to trying this again with other colours to suit the changing seasons.

Do you have any ideas for coating other things with wax? I’d love to read about them, and try them. Please comment and/or leave links to your blog.