Thursday, March 04, 2010

Candle Making!

Red Cedar Spell Candles, for sale at Anathemum.etsy.com




So I totally took the plunge yesterday to destroy the kitchen and decided to try my hand at candle making. However, I'm a strange kid when it comes to buying "for real" supplies for certain crafts, I'd rather just wing it with thrift store finds. I went to a craft store looking for votive molds and I found them. For $20. So forget that. I used a beat-to-crap pot I had and a green bean tin can as my double boiler and decided to make little fat tapers instead. I'd also bought a pound of pure beeswax on a super whim about 2 years ago (it was probably on sale) and some wicks so I just went at it.



I'd been collecting scrap wax from all the burned out candles I've used over the past couple years and decided to mix it in with the beeswax, sort of a waste not want not idea. I also decided to not to add any fragrance but just let the scent of the pure beeswax suffice. It smelled so good as it was melting! Like warm honey.



Baby candles!! It's also good to not let the wax get too hot while dipping and to let the candles cool before dipping again (learns the hard way) so I just did a few sets at a time so there wasn't too much down time. For the red ones, I rolled them around in Red Cedar powder a few times during the whole candle making dipping process and mixed with the honey smell of the beeswax it smells great! I can't wait to make more of these.

Witches, what is one new craft you'd like to try? Or, if you've tried them all, which is your favorite?

6 comments:

sage said...

It looks like you had fun and didn't make too much of a mess!

I'd like to try candle making as well.. although I think next on my list is going to be handmade paper. I just keep thinking of the wonderful things I could recycle when making my own paper!

You have really beautiful treasures in your Etsy Shop!

Blessings~
Sage

Danni said...

I've used the bean can double boiler trick before. Your kitchen doesn't seem too messy. Did you just leave those photos out? ;)

I'd like to try my hand at taper making, instead of the usual votives. I've been working more with loose incense blends and would like to venture into oils as soon as I'm settled in the new place.

A.R.Spencer said...

Sage- Thank you, Sage! Handmade paper sounds like a cool idea! I have a friend saving dryer lint to make cotton paper. It sounds sorta daft but I think the theory is sound! Handmade paper has great texture to it for sure.

Danni- I put trash bags on all the counters I was using to catch all the stray drips. Boyfriend came home and was impressed at my lack of mess :P. Oils are fun but it's such a waiting game, that's the only thing that kills me about it but it's totally worth the wait!

Jenna Gayle said...

I'd like to try my hand at candle making one day. I've got the beeswax at home, so maybe sometime in the near future I'll get around to it! What I'd REALLY like to try is book binding!!! I've got a ton of ideas, but not the first one is how you go about doing it! HA!

mathyld ▲ under the pyramids ▲ said...

Ha ! I got the same tarot deck and the Death is m absolute favourite card ! (the Moon is the second !)

Δ Δ Δ
-m-

A.R.Spencer said...

Isn't the deck just lovely? I adore it. Your blog is lovely as well!