Candle Making

Even children can follow candle making directions, but if you decide to let your kids take part in this candle making experience make sure that you just let them read the candle making directions and help you with the easy parts, not with any of the dangerous parts of the process, namely the heating of the wax because they could get hurt.

Basic Candle Making Directions

The first step to making a basic candle is to melt your wax. You should always use a double boiler, as although your oven will work fine this is the easier and safer way. Always keep a thermometer nearby which you can use to keep track of the temperature of the wax as you are melting it.

Once the wax is completely melted you want to add the dye if desired and fragrance as well if you like. You should stir and then let the wax dye melt and fragrance sink in for about five minutes. Then stir again until everything is combined together completely.

Now you pour the wax into molds, of which can be whatever you desire. There are many different sizes and shapes of candle making molds to choose from, and you should always let wax cool overnight in order to ensure it has completely cooled and will not ruin when you go to take it out of the mold.

That is all that is necessary in the most basic candle making directions, but of course you can add your own variations into this as well. Candle making has always been one of the most enjoyed hobbies, and is a great way to spend your time. Just remember not to get frustrated if your first few sets of candles do not turn out or burn perfectly, because the more you practice the better you are going to be.

Also remember that there are many candle making classes and courses that you can take if you want to get help here, and they are usually very inexpensive. This is definitely a hobby that can be very benefitting to learn, especially around the holidays when you are looking for great and unique gifts to give out to your loved ones.

Candle Making Equipment Every Crafter Must Have

Have you always wanted to make your own candles, but you were daunted by the idea of buying all the candle making equipment? Well think again, because you probably already have a lot of the equipment you need to start making candles right away. Let's see what equipment for candle making you need to get started.

Before you go out and buy wax, you need to have something to melt the wax in. Whatever you do, don't use the microwave, and don't just plop a block of wax into a saucepan on the stove. If you try it anyway and end up with a wax fire, be sure to keep the lid of the saucepan on hand, because you'll have to put the lid over the saucepan to smother the flames. Never, ever pour water on a wax fire.

You Need Something to Melt Wax In

The best way for a beginner to melt wax is in a double boiler system. A double boiler has two pans that fit on top of each other, the smaller pan on top. The bottom pan is kept full of boiling water, and the boiling water creates a gentle, radiant heat that melts the wax safely without a risk of the wax catching on fire.

You should be able to find an inexpensive double boiler at a discount store for under $25. Once you use the boiler as candle making equipment, do not use it for food preparation. You will also need several other inexpensive items which you may have on hand: a candy thermometer, a kitchen scale, a ladle, and a small pan with a spout for pouring wax into molds. Again, once you use these items as equipment for candle making, they should never be used again to prepare food.

If the idea of melting wax intimidates you, then you should look into making beeswax candles. Beeswax candles are made of a sheet of beeswax rolled by hand around a wick, and they are the easiest candles to make and require no stove, no boiling water, and no melting.

Wax and Wax Additives

You can't make candles without wax, and paraffin is one of the most favorite waxes to use. Buy high quality paraffin from a candle making equipment supplier. You'll be tempted to use the cheap canning wax in the grocery store, but you'll be disappointed if you do. A candle making equipment supplier will also have blocks of dyes, fragrances, and other additives on hand.

Wicks and Molds

Finally, you need a supply of wicks and molds, and any candle making equipment supplier will have a wide variety of both. Wicks are pretty straightforward, but molds come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Start with a simple cylindrical pillar and work your way up to the more complicated shapes as you gain more experience working with candle making equipment.

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Novelty candles are a lot of fun. They come in an amazing variety of shapes and sizes and are meant more for decoration than for actual burning.

Most novelty candles are made with candle making latex molds. These flexible molds make it possible for a beginning candle maker to make great-looking novelty candles that look like they were professionally made.

The Hard Part: Choosing a Mold

Latex molds for candle making come in such a variety of subjects and sizes, choosing a mold can be the hardest part of the whole candle making process. If you like to change your home's décor with the holidays, you can find candles for virtually every holiday. There are bunny candle making latex molds for Easter candles, pumpkin-shaped molds for Halloween, turkey-shaped molds for Thanksgiving, and Santa Claus molds for Christmas.

If you love animals and want to make animal candles, you can find latex molds for making candles in the shape of bears, elephants, frogs, gorillas, kangaroos, elephants, and zebra. Candle making latex molds are also available in the shape of many breeds of dogs; there are bird molds, cat molds, and even dinosaur molds.

Making Candles with Latex Molds

Once you select your latex mold, the actual candle making is easy. You'll need to melt hard wax like you do for other candles, at 165 to 185 degrees. Set the wick pin in the mold and set the mold in a coffee can filled with sand. Slowly pour the wax into the mold.

Wait patiently for the wax to cool completely. Depending on the size of your candle, this could take several hours or even overnight. After the wax cools completely just roll the flexible latex mold away from the edge of the candle. If the latex resists, lubricate the outside of the mold with vegetable oil, and it will roll smoothly away from the candle.

Pull out the wick pin and thread the wick through the hole. If the bottom of your molded candle is uneven, level the candle by heating the boiler or saucepan you use to melt your wax and carefully placing the candle in it. Move the candle against the hot surface and carefully remove the candle when the bottom is even.

Remember Safety First



Be sure to follow candle making safety precautions any time you are making candles with latex molds. Treat wax like cooking oil and keep track of its temperature while you heat it. Never leave melting wax unattended, and don't pour your leftover hot wax down the sink. If you do have a wax fire, turn off the heat and cover the pan with its lid. Do not pour water on a wax fire.

Candle Making In Colonial Times Involved Use Of Bayberries To Extract The Wax

Candle making in colonial times was something that gave a lot of people work to do, and since that was en era in which there was no electricity to light up the nights, and oil was too expensive to use for the ordinary person, there was no other option than to use candles to illuminate the nights. In those days, candle making in colonial times involved using animal fat while only the rich could afford to pay for and get candles made out of beeswax that had wonderful smells and which also burnt a lot better.

Better Smelling And Cleaner Candles

However, candle making in colonial times really took off when it was discovered that it was possible to make candles that smelt real nice and which burnt very cleanly by using bayberry shrubs instead of the usual animal fat. In fact, it is still the practice to extract wax by boiling bayberries, and it even takes just as long today to do the extraction as was the case during colonial times.

Another notable aspect to candle making in colonial times was that to make candles largely required that they be made from whale oil. Still, people continued to harvest berries from bayberries shrubs because though it took a lot of effort, it was still the cleanest way to make candles at the time. However, it did take as many as eight pounds of berries to extract a single pound of wax, and even the process of preparing the berries for further extraction of pure wax took quite a few days. All this was however necessary as far as candle making in colonial times went because it helped to eliminate the foul smell of animal fat candles and also because burning those candles were a very messy thing as well.

However, the tradition of candle making in colonial times lives on and if you want to try your hand at this form of candle making, all you need is to buy bayberry wax that is easily available in various stores, and though you can now use molds to create different and wonderful candle shapes, the rest of the candle making process is pretty much the same as was in the colonial times. You would also need strands of cotton that will serve as wicks and along with tapers; you can create candles suitable for use in a home. Still, while candle making in colonial times may have seemed to be very rudimentary, it nevertheless required a lot of skill as well as plenty of dedication to make the candles properly.

If you've been making candles for a while, or if you're thinking about starting your own candle making business, you've probably wondered about mixing paraffin and beeswax to make candles. After all, beeswax is expensive, and learning to make candles by mixing paraffin and beeswax could allow you to make more candles for the same amount of money.

Differences between Paraffin and Beeswax

Before you even think about mixing paraffin and beeswax to make your candles, you need to know what the differences between the two waxes and what will happen if you combine them.

Beeswax is an animal product: a natural substance harvested from beehives. Bees secrete wax when they store honey in their beehives, and beekeepers collect the beeswax for processing into candle making supplies. Beeswax is more expensive than paraffin, and it makes a very hard candle.

If you have any doubt whether your beeswax candles are made of 100 per cent beeswax, press your thumbnail into the bottom of the candle. The candle should be very hard and should resist any indentation from your thumbnail. Candles made of beeswax burn slowly and evenly and emit a pleasant natural aroma of honey when they burn.

Paraffin is a mineral product: a natural substance harvested from the earth. Paraffin wax is less expensive than beeswax, and it makes softer candles and must be mixed with stearic acid to make it hard enough to make candles.

Formulas for Mixing Paraffin and Beeswax to Make Candles

What formula you use to blend paraffin and beeswax depends on the kind of candle you want to make. With dipped candles, you need to add stearic acid to your wax blend to make the wax set up. Dipped candles are made by dipping a length of wick in hot wax, letting that layer of wax set, dipping the wick again, letting that layer set, and repeating the process until the candle reaches the desired thickness.

Molded candles can be made with a straight 50/50 mix of paraffin and beeswax. Mixing paraffin and beeswax to make molded candles is easy; just add equal amounts of paraffin and beeswax to your double boiler. You can even re-melt old candle stubs if you don't mind a few imperfections in your finished candles. Be sure to mix the waxes thoroughly, and hold the temperature between 165 and 185 degrees. As always, never leave melting wax unattended.

After the wax is completely melted, stir in any desired additives. The addition of paraffin will mute the natural fragrance of the beeswax, so you may want to add fragrance that will enhance the aroma of honey. Select natural plant scents of fruits and flowers that bees pollinate: vanilla, lavender, rose, apple blossom, and cherry. Mixing paraffin and beeswax to make candles can be a fun, rewarding project and an economical way to reuse your old candle stubs.

Choosing the Scented Oils for Your Soy Candle Making

Using scented oils for soy candle making is a fun, easy way to transform any ordinary soy candle you are making into an aromatherapy candle. Aromatherapy is an alternative medicine that is gaining respect as its results become more and more apparent.

Aromatherapy uses scented oils to promote healing and prevent disease, which when you think about it is not surprising, because many medicines and other healing substances have their origins in herbs. Using scented oil for soy candle making makes it easy to incorporate these healing essences into your everyday environment.

Scented soy candles aren't just for aromatherapy. They also make great air fresheners for living rooms, bathrooms, or any other room where you need to mask odors.

Essential Oils vs. Fragrance Oils

Deciding what scented oils to use for soy candle making is purely a matter of preference. You may choose to use two kinds of scented oils: essential oils or fragrance oils. Essential oils are derived from natural substances like flowers, herbs, leaves, roots, and barks. Rose, lavender, pine, and cinnamon are examples of essential oils.

The second kind of scented oil for you to use in making soy candles is fragrance oil. Fragrance oil is derived from synthetics. The essential oils of some natural plants, like bananas, cedar, and coffee, don't lend themselves to candle making. These oils have a short shelf life, or their scents are overpowered during the candle making process. Fragrance oils were developed to mimic these natural scents with synthetic substances.

Unless it is extremely important to you to use essential scented oils for soy candle making, you will want to use essential oils and fragrance oils, and blend the two to get the fragrance you want. The best use of fragrance follows the seasons; when making candles for springtime, use pastel colors scented with fragrance oils like forest rain, freesia, and fresh-cut grass. Use cucumber, ocean; and orange blossom scented fragrance oils for summer candles. Coriander and cinnamon essential oils make fabulous fall candles, while pine, peppermint, and coffee are fun fragrances for winter candles.

Adding the Scented Oils to Your Candles

Any fragrance should only be added to wax that has been removed from heat. Remove the boiling water pan from beneath your wax melting pot and make sure no heat is rising from beneath the melting pot. Slowly add the scented oils you desire for your soy candle making process and continue making your soy candles as usual.

Candle making has always been a fun and enjoyable hobby, and you can even learn how to make candles with crayons. You will have to alter the instructions a bit, but learning how to make candles with crayons can be incredibly advantageous, especially since it tends to be so much cheaper than other methods.

Recipe

If you are interested in learning how to make candles with crayons, you will first want to gather the necessary ingredients. This includes 1 wax carton, 1 pound of paraffin wax, 4 or 5 crayons, two trays of ice cubes, a double boiler, and 1 piece of ordinary white package string.

Instructions

The first step in learning how to make candles with crayons is to trim the top of your carton off so that it what is remaining is about six inches high. Now you want to cut a piece of string six inches long, and the melt the wax over medium heat in the double boiler. Make sure that you do not boil the wax, as this can result in burning or bubbling that will be unfavorable in the end.

It usually takes about fifteen minutes for the wax to melt completely at this heat, and once it is completely melted you want to break the crayons you have chosen into pieces and add them into the wax. This is what will give the candles their color, so make sure you have chosen colors that are pleasing to you. Also remember that if you use different colored crayons they are going to blend together as they melt and create a new color so keep this in mind.

Once the crayons have melted you want to use a pair of tongs and dip the string into the wax. This will ensure that it is coated with the wax since the ice cubes may prevent some sections from being fully coated with the wax. Hold the string in the middle of the carton and fill this with ice cubes, then pour the hot wax over the ice cubes.

Let the wax cool, which will usually take about a half hour, and then let it stand for another hour or two until most of the ice cubes are melted. Then you simply need to finish off the process by pouring off the water, peeling off the carton, and placing the candle in a tray or on a plate as this will help by catching the rest of the water from the ice cubes as they melt.

Learning how to make candles with crayons is not only enjoyable but is also great because you can make them and give them out as gifts to your friends and family.

Make Candles and Memories with Candle Making Kits for Kids

Candle making is a fun craft that you can do with your kids, and they can give the candles they make as gifts for birthdays and holidays. You could shop individually for all the supplies you need to make candles with your kids, but why not purchase a kids' candle making kit instead? Once you understand the different kinds of kids' candle making kits that are available, you can pick out a kit and make candles the next time the kids are stuck inside on a rainy day, weekend, or school holiday.

Gel Candle Craft Kits

Gel candle making kits are perfect for kids because you don't have to melt wax to use them. Melting wax means getting out the double boiler, making sure you have wax blocks on hand, keeping kids away from the stove, being super cautious when you pour the hot wax, and waiting for the wax to cool. Then you have to clean everything up. Don't get me wrong; hard wax candles are beautiful. But there are times when you want to make candles with your kids without all the drama of melting wax.

With gel candles, candle draws fuel from the gel instead of from wax. A gel kids' candle making kit comes with clear glass candle jars to pour the gel into, colored candle gel tubes, and special colored chips or other objects that are suspended in the gel to add color and interest to the candle. You can purchase a gel candle making kit for kids that makes a dozen gel candles for about $30.

Beeswax Candle Making Kits for Kids

Beeswax candle kits are another extremely popular craft for kids to do, again because no heat or melting is required. You get sheets of different colored beeswax in the kit and some wicks in your kids' candle making kit. The idea behind beeswax candles is to roll the wick up inside a sheet of beeswax. No parental supervision is needed until it's time to cut the wick or light the finished candle.

Beeswax is an outstanding wax for making candles. It burns long and has a natural fragrance that doesn't seem to upset allergies. With several different colors of beeswax to work with, kids can create multicolored candles with stripes and solid colored candles with different colored bases.

When you get your beeswax candle making kit, if the wax is too stiff, warm it up to make it easier to work with. Just heat the oven to 200 degrees and then turn the oven off. Put one sheet of beeswax in the warm oven for two minutes and take it out. It will be pliable enough to roll around the wick. A beeswax candle making kit for kids can be purchased for under $20.