A Crafter's Life

The Glass Harvest

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Check out Sassy the Highly Opinionated Miniature Schnauzer’s blog page Schnauzer Snips, for her later musings.

“Harvesting” Glasses

It’s Thanksgiving, so a post about a “harvest” is very appropriate, right?

But Tierney, have you lost your mind? How can you harvest glasses? Are you growing glasses in your garden? Do you have a Glass Farm!??!?! (Yes I know that would be both physically and chemically impossible!)

No, this post is about recycling the glass from nice candles into drinking glasses.

I LOVE nice candles. High quality candles. As they can be rather expensive, I only purchased them occasionally as a special treat. In addition to the scent, I select a high quality scented candle based on the “reusability” of the candle’s glass holder.

My love of high quality candles started 8 years ago when I happened upon a garage sale in which someone was selling brand new Votivo candle for $1. All I knew was that the candle smelled wonderful and I paid the $1 and left the garage sale with my find. Little did I know these “designer” candles retail for $25!

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Photo credit: amazon.com

When the candle was burned down I realized I did not want to part with the high quality glass that it came with. The glass had a nice weight and would make a lovely juice glass.

So I figured out a way to “harvest” the glass and get rid of the wax and wick inside.

Here is collection of harvested ex-candle glasses that we use as our daily glasses:

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Here is the “harvesting” process I have refined over the years (recently I harvested a new ex-candle glass):

First, I let the candle burn all the way to the bottom:

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Next, I boil water and then place the candle in a metal bowl with boiled water, to soften the wax and the glued/anchored wick at the bottom:

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Then, when the wax is soft, I use an old spoon and scoop out the wax and the wick and it’s based (with many high quality candles the wick in anchored to the bottom of the glass):

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Once the wax is removed (or as much as I can remove it), I use hot soapy water (dish soap) and an old sponge and scrub out the glass; I also remove any labels by scrubbing/peeling them off:

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Finally, I run it through the dishwasher and Voila – a new glass:

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My newly “harvested” glass and a couple other former candle glasses (note my new glass is filled with my favorite beverage – Blood Orange Organic Soda):

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Sure I could recycle these glasses via the Glass Recycling service provided by our municipal garbage company, but this way I get to keep on enjoying them after the candle is gone!

Postscript

Just a quick update on my adventures in English Paper Piecing (EPP), as a follow up to these these post: Adventures in English Paper Piecing (Part I) and The Library Stack (and a little EPP).

Terry the Quilting Husband has been helping with setting up my hexagons for EPP. I cut the fabric into 3 inch x 3 inch squares, he lightly glues (with glue stick) the hexagons to the fabric and I trim them down a bit before doing the EPP.

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He also now helps punch the holes into the paper punched hexagons that will make it easy to remove the paper templates once the hexagons are sewn together.

He seems to enjoy these type of projects while he watches football (or he is just one very nice and helpful husband!)

I’ve made a lot of EPP hexagons (aka “hexies”) so far, but that is another post….

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Published by tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Quilter, crafter, obsessive tea drinker and lover of all furry creatures (especially dogs and cats) - join me on my tierneycreates blog as I share stories from "A Crafter's Life".

19 thoughts on “The Glass Harvest”

  2. I also save the good glasses, but I skip the digging out the wax step by putting the glass in the oven for a few minutes, watching carefully, until the wax is melted. Then I can pour out the remaining wax and wick and wipe out the glass with paper towels before the dishwasher does the rest.

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  3. Great idea, and ‘reuse’ comes before ‘recycle’ in the jingle (Reduce, reuse, recycle). I learned the jingle while playing “A Chicken in Every Pot,” a cooperative game designed by Animal Farm (now out of business, I think).

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  4. Fantastic idea, all your glasses look so good, it would have been a shame for them to be binned.
    You have a great husband, a great team. Do you die cut / punch your hexagons? Or all hand cut? Although I don’t see, I know that they brought out a die cutter for the quilting community, interestingly they also increased the price for it, and the dies, which are basically the same as the paper dies?…..have you heard of terial Magic by tattered lace? Only useful if you have a die cutting machine.😀

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  5. Love the post, but…well…(*hesitates because she doesn’t want to bring this up and squash all the excitement, but is still concerned for her friend,so thinks she has to throw it out there…*)You know all that reading through the library I’ve been doing? Well I recently came across some information about candles.They can be toxic –and therefore very bad for you health. Unless you use candles made out of natural materials (beeswax, soy, etc) you could be breathing in formaldehyde–no matter how good is smells. I just don’t want you and your wonderful hubby to get sick! (There will be a Dewey Hop post about household toxins probably in Jan or early February). Anyway, the good news is that you can still get great smelling natural candles with pretty glasses for your harvests. Be safe and be blessed!

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    1. Funny, I had run out of candles and recently I bought a couple new ones – all soy based! It was just a spontaneous decision while looking at candles but it might be the right one according to your comment 🙂 I look forward to your future post on household toxins, should be more interesting reading! Thanks for your comments!

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      1. I’m so relieved. I was worried I may have offended you. It’s just one of those things that once you learn you can’t unlearn and it’s hard to watch people who have no idea what they are being exposed to. The depth and scope of how we encounter formaldehyde alone on a daily basis is mind boggling. Great choice on the soy candles!

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    2. You could never offend me by offering great advice! We kind of gasp when we see all those air freshener candles advertised on TV (and especially the plug in air fresheners) as we know there are all kinds of toxins going into the air of people’s homes! That is one thing I like about blogging, I learn a lot from reading the blogs of others as well as comments on my blog 🙂

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      2. Before I did all that reading, I admit I was pretty ignorant about a lot of the air fresheners/candles. I was afraid of those plug in things though for different reasons. I’ve heard they can start fires (and I’ve seen the scary pictures). I live in an old fixer upper house that may not have the best electrical situation to begin with. For that reason alone I have stayed away from them. Also there are weird things in old houses and most of the outlets in my home are horizontal! That doesn’t work well with liquid air fresheners that you plug in! I found through the reading that there were items I have avoided–for completely different reasons, but that have turned out to be toxic anyway!

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  6. I save all my candle glasses too! I use them as little flower vases but never thought to use as drinking, thank you for sharing this great idea. I like having a variety of different shapes and sizes of glasses too. I will be keeping an eye out for your (and husband’s:) finished hexies

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  7. Clever idea, though I’m not a candle person but I think I should be 😁. Anyway, I can’t wait to see your EPP projects. By the way, I don’t ever have to punch my hexies and I can’t recall having a tough time pulling out the templates. I haven’t made a big project though so maybe that’ll make a difference.

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