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| How
You Can Color Fireplace Flames
You may also treat pinecones, coarse sawdust or cork waste and throw them into the fireplace to color the fire. They are far easier to treat and take less time to dry. Here are two methods for treating bases such as course sawdust, pinecones and cork waste. Best for sawdust - Dissolve the chemical in water. Stir in your base. When the solution is completely absorbed, spread the base out in a thin layer to dry. Best for cork-based chips - Add 1 pint of liquid glue to 7 parts of water. Crush the chemical to a fine powder and add 1 pound of the powder to each gallon of glue-water. Put into the liquid as much of the sawdust, cork waste or pinecones that it will take, stirring and adding more base until all the liquid has been absorbed. Spread out on a rack to dry. It is better to treat separate portions of your base with the solution of a single chemical than to treat the base in a single mixture of various chemicals. After drying the separately treated portions of sawdust or cork waste, you can then mix them together in order to achieve distinctly colored flames. There is no fixed proportion of chemicals to be used to a given amount of water. As much of the powdered chemical should be mixed with water as will dissolve, until you have a saturated solution. The only exception is ordinary table salt (sodium chloride), in which case you should use 1/2 ounce of salt to each pint of water. Coarse hardwood sawdust is better than pine or other softwood sawdust as a base. Cork waste also makes an excellent base. -end-
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For years I loved the Yankee Candles, but found them to cost
more than I could consistently afford to purchase. About the time I
got into making candles myself, and finding out how truly easy and
rewarding it is, SoyWax™ was just coming out as a serious competitor
to Paraffin. In my opinion, there is no comparison.
SoyWax™ is
more economical, it burns soot free, and burns longer than paraffin based
waxes. It throws fragrance just as well as paraffin based
waxes. Best of all, I can simply melt the wax in my microwave, mix
my fragrance oil, and pour into containers. SoyWax™ also cleans up
very easy with soap and water, where paraffin does not. Beyond all
of these great attributes of SoyWax™, I find the fact it supports
American farmers to be the best reason. Buying paraffin, a derivative
of oil, does not really support the farmers' in the United States.
Back to mans preoccupation
with fire, even starting a fire in a fireplace has become ritualized. Aficionados
of a true fire will tell you to use 
If you enjoy sitting around your
fireplace and watching colorful flames dance, you'll be happy to know you can
color your own flames quite cheaply. Basically, there are three methods of
coloring fireplace flames. You can soak the logs in an alcohol solution which
contains certain chemicals. Or you can soak the logs in a water solution
containing certain chemicals and then dry them. And finally, you can just throw
certain chemicals into the flames. The various chemicals or salts required for
certain colors of flames are as follows:
potassium soleplate ( 3 parts) and potassium nitrate
(1 part) for violet flames