Any ideas about improving Retro-Basic wax formula?

[Innotic]

Hello, and greetings from Poland!

I remade a chinese lamp recently. Wax is based on Retro-Basic formula (flows pretty good). This lamp will be a gift for my girlfriend who needs some decoration for her new room. Unfortunely, clean liquid makes it too bright at night. I want to redo it again using high quality paraffin wax, yellow candle dye and some blue food coloring to make it green. Do You know any other materials i need to combine when melting wax? Maybe someone experimented with adding another ingredients like mineral oil or something? Post Your suggestions here.

EDIT: Any Mathmos, Lava Lite's and Goo-kits are not avaible here...

[Jus]

You may not need to redo!  Have you considered adding a plug-in dimmer (inline dimmer switch)?  Cuz you then can definitely crank that baby down for more darkness, and still hold on to a successful re-do!

[Innotic]

No I don't, but dimmer will kill the flow, am I correct? Cutting voltage should result in less heat. I couldn't find this type of dimmer when lamp was untouched anyway.

Now I got another idea. I'll work out the correct flow today, buy some red food coloring tomorrow and dye the water. Darker water should result in less light in room.

[Keith]

That is what I was going to suggest, just adding food coloring to darken the water. :)

Innotic said:

No I don't, but dimmer will kill the flow, am I correct? Cutting voltage should result in less heat. I couldn't find this type of dimmer when lamp was untouched anyway.

Now I got another idea. I'll work out the correct flow today, buy some red food coloring tomorrow and dye the water. Darker water should result in less light in room.

[Innotic]

Sticking to the topic, anyone know some good additives to improve wax? I'm thinking about something giving "stretchy" effect I've seen in several lamps (blob is rising and then separates into two smaller ones). Also I'm curious, how to get my wax more glossy. It's very important in clear liquid lavas I think. Ok, back to my restoration:

Lamp is back to normal. However, water needs a bit less salt (lot of wax stays on top when running longer) so i poured out 1/3 of it and replaced with tap water. People saying that table salt will cloud the water. I used table salt when fixing my second lamp about month ago and it's working perfectly - clear, fine liquid (i've got to clean the globe inside in spare time - some stains here).

There's also another thing I want to share with all of You. I found a good surfacant. It's "kitchen cleaner". My mother bought it in Tesco and the good thing is, it saves from bubbles in wax. Any dish soap I tried caused lava to get bubbles inside... I'll post it's photo and chemical composition soon, maybe You can buy something similiar in Your country :)