Julie Finn
‘Tis the season for making origami Mayflowers!
Of course, when your kid makes an origami Mayflower, the one thing that she is IMMEDIATELY going to do is try to make it float.
Cue the broken heart in 5, 4, 3, 2…
Fortunately, there is a pretty easy way to make that paper boat float, and it also just happens to involve my favorite autumn crafting supply: melted beeswax!
1. Melt some beeswax. Melt a cup or so of beeswax in a crafts-only crock pot or a DIY stovetop bain marie. Bonus: it will make your house smell awesome.
You might think it’s weird that I measure my solid beeswax
2. Make a boat! Make your favorite origami boat; I like this origami boat tutorial from SusieJ.
3. Paint a layer of beeswax onto the boat. Give your kids an old paintbrush that can now be the “beeswax paintbrush,” and let them paint melted beeswax all over the bottom and sides of the boat.
Yes, they’ll drip a couple of drips of liquid beeswax onto their skin, but it’s not really *that* hot. Lesson learned!
Have your kids paint the beeswax pretty far up the sides of the boat (as if they’ll need encouragement to do that!), because you’ll find that, anachronistically, the Mayflower is going to get into a LOT of sea battles during its voyage.
If your boat is small enough and your crock pot wide enough, you can instead dip your boat into the melted beeswax to coat it. You’ll need to dip it at a bit of an angle to release the air pocket from the middle of the boat so that beeswax can get in. Remember, those beeswax drips won’t be *that* hot!
4. Set sail! Your origami Mayflower is ready for its maiden voyage!
And yes, you might as well drop the Thanksgiving theme at this point and just let your kid make a whole fleet now. Pirate battles are hard on paper boats…
NOTE: Yes, this waterproofing method will TOTALLY work with soy wax, or any other eco-friendly solid wax.
That looks like a lot of fun! We may have to wait for warmer weather though.