Our Candle Making Adventures

Well folks, we have been wanting to try our hand at candle making for a while now and it finally happened! We did it!  They are far from perfect but they happened and we are looking forward to doing it again. We love beeswax and have been discovering new uses for it in our life as of late. I have been really wanting beeswax tapered candles for our dining room table but each time we came across some they were on the pricey side so Dylan suggested we just make them. I was mega giddy about this new project.

Now let me start this off by saying this is not an in-depth tutorial but merely a photo journal of how we did it and what did/did not work for us. I found this video by Way Out West very helpful and highly suggest it.

We started off with a basic kit from Micheals. This seemed the best route for us since everything we needed to start was included in this kit. Use one of those 40% coupons in your email or download the app or just go here. The kit came with pretty much everything we needed  and then we also bought a roll of cotton wick and a block of beeswax.

We started off with the paraffin wax to get our feet wet, then later did the beeswax but for the sake of this post you’ll be seeing both intermittently.

We chopped up all the wax. This was a tough job, Dylan took over this task while I heated up the water for the double boiler and prepared the wicks for the tapers.  I set up our clothes drying rack for the taper candles to dry on.  I tied nuts on the end of the wicks for weights.

We made our double boiler with a tall wide mouth mason jar and a pan on the stove. I feel like the beeswax took a little longer to melt than the paraffin wax.

I have learned from decrystallizing my honey to place a washcloth between the jar and the bottom of the pan. Works like a charm and the washcloth comes out just fine.

I used some bamboo chopsticks for stirring and to help move the wax around to melt it down.

As seen in the video link I shared earlier, they used a bucket of water to cool the wax. We also did this.

I ended up with very lumpy candles towards the end. I am uncertain what the cause for this was. It could’ve have been water drops on the wax after cooling it in the water or it could be just air pockets from hurried dippings towards the end.

We poured the rest of the wax after the tapers into found containers  and jars throughout the house and the votive molds that came with the candle kit.

Bobby pins, clothes pins and chopsticks were excellent tools to hold the wicks center.

It was fun watching the candles cool and harden. To speed up some of the process I placed the containers in the fridge. This was quite efficient.

So overall it was fun. I still can’t decide if I like the imperfectness of our lumpy tapered candles but they happened and I will burn them either way. Dylan says they look ‘fun.’  I think he was just trying to be a supportive husband.  All of our container candles turned out great! We have a nice little stock pile of candles set aside now.

The beeswax burns nice and clean and we are looking to see if we can possibly buy it locally next time.  We know we can buy it from our co-op and I believe it is local since the honey we have bought there is local. However, if you’re in the Pittsburgh area and have a great connection to some beeswax, we’re interested.

We have slowly picked up candlesticks holders here and there but one of my more proud holders is a simple pipe fitting adapter that we picked up at Lowe’s randomly. It’s a great size and super cheap.

For a fun match container DIY go here.

-Zon