After melting and tinting your wax, two cakes for one lemon, have ready your mold—remember that every mold must be soaked in hot, strong soap suds—have the upper half ready to put on as soon as your lower half is filled with the hot wax. Pour in the even half of the mold with the melted wax first. Never allow any to slop over the edge. Place on the upper half immediately and lock closely together, holding them clasped and turning them gently over and over, keeping every part in a slow, steady motion until the liquid sound has all ceased. About ten minutes is needed to every piece of fruit the size of a lemon or an orange.
Let them stand inside the mold for some time, opening very carefully. If your mold is perfect, very little trimming will be required. With a sharp penknife remove every trace of the rim where the fruit mold joined together, and wash off with benzine, rubbing a little dry powder over the lemon to give it a fresh picked appearance, and painting the stem end with water colors.
Orange is made precisely like the lemon, only orange chrome is used instead of lemon.
Apples are made from the lemon cup or the orange cup, with a little green chrome added to vary the foundation tint, and after molding, trimming and washing off with benzine, paint red with dry carmine, producing a splendid effect.
Peaches molded from the lemon cup, or orange, according to the tint required. The fault with fruit-makers consists in getting too deep a color in the cup, or melted tint, and that always produces the coarse effect of the fruits usually displayed. Peaches should be molded of a very delicate foundation tint, first trimmed while hot from the mold, as little rubbing as possible on them, painted hot, and after the carmine cheeks are rubbed on, (dry powdered carmine being used), white flock should be rubbed all over them, to give them the soft, downy effect.
Plums are painted with ultramarine or indigo blue added to the carmine.
Grapes are made over glass globes, blown for the purpose, first stemmed, then dipped in green or purple wax, and bloomed over with corn meal (sifted on them).
The California grapes are easy to imitate, for the green wax, after dipping, simply needs a little carmine painting outside.
No cross, piece of statuary, or vase, can ever be taken from the molds unless the molds are made in a number of pieces. After running the body of a cross, there must be a standard through the upright before it hardens, to support it. Pour the lower part on afterward.
Molds for Leaves, consisting of a great variety of beautiful formations, from almost every tree or shrub in nature’s garden. Among the number you have to select from are: Oak, maple, myrtle, lily of the valley, ivy, willow, currant, cherry, grape, orange, strawberry, blackberry, chestnut, etc., etc.