Fire Glass - Amazing Flammable Glass to Replace Wood

"Fire glass produces more heat than real wood, and is also environmentally friendly. There is no smoke, it's odorless and doesn't produce ash. You are able to stay toasty warm without cutting down trees and the specially formulated glass crystals give off no toxic deposit.."  

I actually stumbled across this on a buzzfeed article about pinterest (I will just come out and say it, if you want bad pinterest ideas, buzzfeed is a hotbed of them) and knew right away that couldn't be right. I searched pinterest curious to see how often this is actually pinned, and was floored that the above image has been repinned nearly 5,000 times from one pin alone.

A quick Google search later and sure enough, I found the website for Fire Glass. Pulled directly from their FAQs: 

"Fire Glass is tempered glass that is used in fireplaces and fire pits to increase vibrancy, reflection and color. Tempered glass is tumbled and polished to prevent sharp edges and injury. The glass is designed for gas fire pits and gas fireplaces to tolerate high temperatures without melting, burning or discoloring when used as recommended. The glass does NOT create toxic fumes, smoke, ash, or soot... You can use fire glass with both propane and natural gas. "

What does all that mean? It's not a "flammable glass". It's a filler used in gas or propane fireplaces and fire pits; instead of lava rocks or fake wood, you add Fire Glass. The glass itself isn't flammable and won't do anything if you try to set it on fire. It's not a replacement for real wood in a wood burning fire pit. It is quite pretty and I can see the appeal, but unless you have a gas burning pit, it's not going to do anything.

Freezing Candles to Prolong Burning and Preventing Drips

"freezing candles not only makes them burn slower, but can prevent them from dripping" 

This was a really interesting pin to test out. My original theory on this was honestly it wasn't going to make  difference, assuming that any temperature change freezing the candle would have made would quickly fade once it was brought out into a room of steady 70* temperature and lit. In fact, googling brought up a handful of sites that also agreed with this theory.  

As soon as I saw this pin I went to my drawer of candles and was ready to test it out. Yes, I really do have an entire dresser drawer dedicated to candles. Despite what you might read on pinterest, crayons and Crisco are no replacement for good candles. Unfortunately when going through my stash, I realized I mostly have hundreds of tea lights, larger scented decorative candles, and only two matching unscented plain wax votive candles. I wanted uniformity, candles of the same brand, same size, and unscented, with out coloring to assure nothing would get in the way of results. I would have liked to have had at least a half dozen to assure clear results, but I decided to test this out regardless.

One candle was left in the drawer at room temperature, while the other one was left in the freezer for a week. I pulled out the candle and wrote "Frozen" on it, to assure the candles wouldn't get mixed up, and then placed them both on the same style of dish on my china hutch. They both lit just fine and I decided to check back in 30 minutes to see how they were doing. 

(Room temperature on the left, frozen on the right) 

I was amazed to see after the first 30 minute mark that the frozen candle appeared to be burning slower - the ring of melted wax was much smaller than it was on the room temperature candle. This was actually starting to look promising! 

However, when I checked back again in another 30 minutes, the tides had changed. The frozen candle still had a smaller area of melted wax, but had clearly burnt down faster than the room temperature candle. I kept checking back every 30 minutes, and it became clear that the frozen candle was actually burning faster then the room temperature one was, by quite a lot. 

You can see here the candles, side by side, after just about 2 hours of burning.

So I'm going to say this is a bad idea, most other articles on this I've read have said that it doesn't do anything as far as extending the life of the candles and how fast they burn, and if my test is a sign of anything, it actually makes them burn far faster. Honestly though I WILL be testing this out again with a larger amount of candles, the sheer difference in burning just the two candles makes me think this can't be a fluke. And drips? Yeah that's a no. The frozen candle ended up spewing and dripping wax so badly that I'm glad I had set it on a dish before lighting it. The room temperature candle didn't drip and didn't leak at all, though it also didn't burn down as far a the frozen candle did.

Crisco Candle Does Work, But Still Not the Best Idea

Ah, yes, the Crisco candle. I've had a lot of people send me this asking about it. Does it work? Yes, it does. It's also easy enough to make: just take a tub of crisco, use a stick or skewer to pierce a hole through the center, and insert a wick. I know, I usually do Good Idea Fridays, but this one is a mixed-results post; since it does work, I didn't feel it qualified as a bad idea, but there are some risks involved that I think everyone should be aware of. 

First off, the container the shortening comes in? It's a foil-lined cardboard tube. So, where as this can burn for something like 45 hours, as the pin suggests, I would never in a million years suggest doing that. If left to burn long enough, the melted oil of the crisco can make it's way into the paper, making it perfect fuel for fire. Also, as with all things like this, Crisco CAN catch fire (so can wax and other oils that are used in candles and oil lamps). Please, if you try this, DO NOT let it burn for too long. It's not something you just light and walk away from. 

The truth is, this is something I would only ever use in a last case scenario. There are much better options out there that would work better, but if you find yourself in a cabin in the woods in the middle of the night with no electricity and the batteries in your flashlight are about to go out, then something like this will work. But for everyday home use when the power goes out, anything from candles to a battery powered lantern would still be preferable. The truth is, with a bit of wick and pretty much any oils, you can make a candle or lantern out of anything from kerosene to tallow to paraffin or lard. But they all come with a high flammable risk, so be careful.

Crayons As Makeshift Candles

"In an emergency, a crayon will burn for 30 minutes." 

Ok. I'm trying to get through this post without laughing. For some reason this image alone makes me laugh every single time I look at it. I also thought I would try something different and do a video post for this bad idea. Because honestly, this is a REALLY bad idea. 

UPDATE 1.24.15

We're working on a new format for the blog and are currently having problems getting the video to play properly on mobile devices.

Here is a direct link.

So lets get down to why you shouldn't do this. On youtube I found just a few videos of people attempting this. As I showed in the video, I did one crayon with your basic lighter, and another with my work torch. I actually seemed to have had better luck with my lighter than I had previously seen on other youtube videos, but the torch, due to its higher temperature and more focused flame, got the job done quicker. My theory on why this works is that it's like a reversed candle - the paper on the outside of the crayon acts as a wick, and the melting wax inside the crayon helps coat and protect the paper from just going straight up into flames. 

But they don't burn for 30 minutes. Maybe 10-15 if you're lucky. In my video I show how at the 5 minute mark it's already halfway burned though. Also, the image above has it sitting on someone's carpet. Which is just remarkable as far as "really bad ideas" go -- not only are you faced with dripping wax on your carpet, most carpets are made with synthetic fibers and when they catch fire, it's not good. The wax itself is just a simple paraffin wax, which is commonly used in candles and even foods, but this experiment caused a lot of smoke to form, leaving my studio smelling my melted crayons for quite some time. 

All in all, this is just not a good idea. The crayon itself isn't stable, making it very prone to tipping or falling over, it doesn't last long, and it puts off a lot of smoke. I can't think how this would ever be a good idea. In a pinch you're better off even making a homemade oil burning lamp with olive oil than you would this. But the majority of people generally keep candles, lanterns, and flashlights on hand in case of power outage. 

Good Idea Friday - Refilling your Wallflowers

"Do it yourself refills for any plug-in air freshener. Less expensive and better for your health!"

This idea was submitted to me by at least three different people last week, so it's clearly a hot item over at Pinterest at the moment. But is it a good idea? Bad idea? Honestly - it's a little of both. Not bad enough to put as a bad idea, but flawed enough it's not the best of ideas. Here's why. 

Wallflowers - the ever popular home scent item from Bath and Body Works, are heavy in things like VOC and chemically made scents. Anyone wanting a more natural home will understand why plugging something like that into your outlets to scent the home isn't really all that good. But what about a more natural alternative? As the pin states just use natural oils! 

My first thought when I saw this was that it was fairly sound - simply replacing the artificial scents with natural oils would work. But after spending a bit of time researching I'm not so sure anymore. Over at My Daily Bread, she brings up a lot of good points - mainly that what makes natural oils so nice is also why they aren't commonly used in items like this. Exposure to high heat, air and light will cause the oils to break down. Not to mention the sheer COST that it would take to refill these - essential oils are very costly depending on the scent you're going for. I've seen on other blogs where they recommend mixing it with various other oils and alcohol, but that starts to get in possibly dangerous territory since this is eventually being heated by an outlet, and could pose a fire risk. Different oils have different heat rates at which they can combust, so unless you know the oil you're using is safe to use in this manner it's probably best not to. I'd imagine a light scented oil with a high smoke point would be the safest as they handle heat the best, something like canola (475°F) or safflower oil (510°F) tend to have a high smoke point and are easily accessible.

But that all aside - does this work? Yes, I believe it would. I don't have those in my house to personally test out, but I've read enough blogs and articles about it to make me think this would work. The downside being of course is it's far more costly and not going to be as powerful scented as the artificial ones. 

So what can you do if you want a more natural way to scent your house without having to spend $15 every time you need to refill one plug in? Easy. Long ago, before they had even came up with plug ins, it was fairly common for people to have metal or ceramic rings that they would set on a lamp's light bulb and then fill with oils. Once heated by the lamp, the scent would be released. Why is this better? Because you're only using a small amount of oil at a time, so it doesn't have time to fade or go rancid, and comes with a far lower chance of fire. You can also change the scents easily on a whim. The rings are sold at a lot of different places and tend to run about $5 a piece, so it's also cheaper than the whole wallflower set up is. 

So what do you think? Good idea or bad idea? Any of our fans going to try this for us and report back?  

Easy Cheese Toast with a side of Fire

"Easy grilled cheese using toaster turned on its side."

I originally heard about this idea over at reddit.com some time back, so I wasn't too surprised when I saw it being repined a year later on pinterest. The problem? The pin doesn't talk about amount of toaster fires this little trick has caused. You can't just take a toaster, turn it on it's side, and expect it to magically make cheese toasties. Not only do you run the risk of the cheese melting down into the elements and catching fire, a lot of toasters have that neat trick of popping the toast up once it's finished. I bet you can imagine what happens when it's laying on it's side and it does that.. yep - it shoots flaming hot cheese toast. Some modern toasters even have a grill that when the level is pushed down, moves in to grab hold of the toast, so if yours does that you're going to have a hard time cleaning melted cheese off the grate. 

So what do you do when time is tight and you have hungry kids demanding food? Best to stick to ether using a traditional toaster oven for this, or do what I do - stick the toast with cheese under you're oven's broiler for a few seconds. It works as well as this trick does and is less likely to cause a house fire (as long as you keep an eye on it - your broiler gets real hot real quick) 

Flatten Glass Bottles in Your Oven

"Flatten glass bottles in a convection oven…to make cutting boards or small serving trays, I love this!" 

Except it doesn't work that way. Glass has a melting temperature of roughly 1500 °F. Making the pin even worse is the link that it goes to, which suggestions making this in your TOASTER OVEN. Because nothing says tequila night like burning your house down. Which if your oven can get that high is remarkable. Imagine how quickly you could cook a roast in an oven like that. And by oven I mean kiln, because that's what it would take to make this.

Unstoppable Bad Idea

This is one of those ideas that just had me confused as to who honestly thought it was OK, and more so that it seems a LOT of people don't question the safety of this.

What's that you ask? It's The new laundry product by Downy, called Unstopables, in an oil burner. Apparently if you do this, your house will have a 'just done fresh laundry' scent all day long. I've seen this all over Pinterest, and tried to find the blog that this image originated from but couldn't. I did however find a lot of people complaining that it didn't work, and just ended up smelling badly burnt.

Let's back up here. People are taking laundry products, and melting them. With out a care or thought in the world about what is IN this product. I'll give you a hint - it's not just lovely magical scent beads that are perfectly fine to melt. I can tell you right now this isn't a good idea. There is a big difference between adding something to your wash, and melting it and breathing in those heavenly scented fumes. But just to play it safe on my report, I emailed P&G directly about this. I have a feeling the woman who replied thought I had lost my ever loving mind, and gave me your pretty basic reply: 

Thanks for contacting Downy

Safety is our top priority and all our products are thoroughly evaluated to be safe when used properly. We cannot recommend using a product for a different purpose or in any way other than as explained in the instructions on the label.
Thanks again for writing

Megan - Downy Team

So there you go, direct from P&G, you really shouldn't be using something used in your wash in an oil burner. And because I'm curious enough, I looked up the actual safety data on Unstopables. Which is just full of interesting information. Not only do they recommend NOT using water if this stuff catches fire, they also directly say to avoid excessive heat and open flames. I haven't bothered to look up the ingredients to see how it could affect you if you inhale them, but I can take a guess and imagine it's probably not the best thing. (you can read the write up here (PDF) if you're interested)