Because you can never have too much emergency lighting or fun with crayons
Perhaps there’s been a power cut and your home has been plunged into darkness? Or maybe you just want a project that puts to use of all those broken Crayolas lying around (that’s enough to make any healthy and safety inspector grind their teeth to dust). Here’s the hack for you.
Pick up three of those surplus colouring devices, all roughly equal in size, and remove their labels (soaking them in cold water makes this easier).
Now bunch them together, with a string of natural fibre (think a length of wool, or a strand from an old-fashioned mop) running up through the centre as your wick.
Bind the lot with a couple of straightened out paperclips and secure its base carefully. Make sure you keep a close eye on it, but your makeshift candle should burn for about an hour.
OK, you won’t be giving Diptyque any sleepless nights, but you’ve certainly acquired some valuable survivalist skills.
This was just one of the miscellaneous makes from our bumper Miscellany pages in our May issue, where you can also learn skills including getting rid of slugs, telling apart all the different pasta shapes in the shops, recalling Romeo and Juliet accurately, and listing the component parts of a flower, among other things. There’s also a wordsearch, a spot the difference and a game of Eye Spy to keep you busy.
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