Here are a couple of the candles that my friend and I made on Friday. She brought a bunch of empty votives that she got at Goodwill for 15 cents each. Between that and all the little jam jars I contributed, we made a few dozen candles out of about 4+ pounds of beeswax. The beeswax was very “raw” — we even pulled out a couple ants that were released when it melted. Half the candles we colored red and the other half we left the honey color of the raw beeswax.
You can see that the natural honey color affected the red of the other candles; it turned out kind of coral. We added apple fragrance to the red candles and hazelnut/buttercream to the naturally-colored candles.
We had quite an adventure the day of making candles! I’m sure we will laugh and fondly remember it for years to come. We learned together. One of the experiments was tucking cloves into the hardening wax around the wick (see above picture, in the naturally colored candle). I don’t think we’ll do that again. It looked pretty at first, but then it just kind of started some cracking in the wax. It just didn’t turn out like we’d hoped!
We followed the directions here: www.candletech.com. They were very good directions. In particular, the author offered a very helpful trick for gluing down the wicks in the center of the bottom of the jar. That certainly would have saved me some trouble ten years ago when I made candles for the first time.
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Oooh, I love the look of your candles.
We are planning on making some this week from the beeswax I ordered. Maybe they will turn out as nicely as yours!
I wasn’t planning on putting my wax in jars, oh but yours looks so nice, maybe I will reconsider…
It sounds like this was a fun project.
Sylvia, I can’t wait to see your candles! Were you going to use molds for your candles or were you going to make tapers by dipping? If we ever do candles again, I’d like to do the dipping!
Love, Wardeh
These are beautiful! I love the coral color and the beeswax one with the cloves is really nice…great job! warm and gentle hugs
My original plan was to dip them. I probably won’t know up until the day I make them but I will try to get pictures.
Oh WOW those are beautiful, Wardeh. Wonderful job.
A few years ago I nearly bought all of the supplies to make beeswax candles. I still want to, but am waiting until the girls are a little older so they can help as well. Maybe 12 or 13?