RobsCreations

...well, it depends on the wax! I've been making candles for 3 years now and I have experienced several problems myself before finding the right temperature to end up with flawless nice candles. If you decide to make candles: take your time, use a thermometer and check the temperature of your melted wax before pouring, always ! It happened to me several times that, because I was in a rush, I poured the wax soon after I have melted it and I ended up with really ugly candles! If you pour at high temperature you may end up with fragrance loss (evaporation), frosting (this is a frequent problem with soy wax), massive shrinking (not good for container candles), cracking on top. If you pour at a very  low temperature you can have jump lines , wax can start to solidify in the container and so on... Full post on  FROSTING HERE . In my experience, buying certified frosting-resistant soy wax only partially limits the problem... Two golden ru...

I've been recently asked to make a special candle for twin babies. Considering my new found love for card making, I decided to create a matching card as well. But let's start from the candle... I haven't been making candles for a while now (it's a pain over summer time!!!) and needed to re-order raw materials and stuff to stock up! That was fun too! This is a ' pillar candle with chunks ' I've already talked about these candles over the blog ( HERE ), but let me remind you something: They are great because they use the good scent throw of the soy wax and the hardness of paraffin, basically the best qualities of both!!! If you want to see other examples of these candles follow  THIS LINK Gummy bears are made with soy wax too and you can find pictures of the silicon moulds I've used  HERE For the card, I've used baby design paper and recycled buttons, and a sentiment from the Mama Elephant Stamps - Labeled M...

Definitely not the first post on paraffin candles, but here there is a new 'effect' I want to talk about.  These white-ish lines (also called jump lines) can be an anti-aesthetic trait on some candles (I hate them on glass jar candles), but in some specific cases (like this one) they really give the candle a beautifully textured look making it appear vintage!  The secret? I let the melted paraffin cool down for quite a bit before pouring it in the mould, and I have poured it quite slowly.  The white-ish ridges/lines appear because as soon as the wax touches the mould's walls, it hardens. Mould's temperature remains constant and, without any external heat source, it is impossible to re-melt these lines.

New pillar paraffin candles with soy wax chunks!  The first OFFICIAL request from a friend!

As I've already written, for stand-alone candles you should ideally use a pretty hard wax like paraffin.  But paraffin doesn't have a spectacular ' scent  throw ', that actually soy wax has! How to take the best of the two waxes?  A nice idea is to make pillar candles with coloured and scented soy wax chunks ! 1) You first melt the soy wax, add colours and fragrances/oils, then you pour the wax  as an about 1 cm layer and wait that it cools down; 2) 15 to 30 minutes later, when the wax has solidified but it's still a bit soft, you will cut with a knife small cubes (the more irregularly shaped, the better); 3) Prepare the mould with the cotton wick; 4) Fill half (or even more) of the mould with chunks, melt paraffin (colour it if you wish) and then pour it in the mould! That's the final effect you will obtain! 

This post is dedicated to moulded candles .  You can use either 100% of paraffin (light pink candle) or a mix of paraffin/soy wax (blue candle). I strongly discourage you to use 100% soy wax for this project: pillar candles should be hard enough to stand alone without the help of a container and pure soy wax is a way softer than paraffin.

If you wish to make your candle appear as it has craters, you definitively have to use ice cubes ! While melting your paraffin, you'll prepare the mould, insert and fix the cotton wick and eventually add some coarsely ground ice cubes in the mould (up to 1/3 or half of the mould). When the wax is completely melted, you can add dyes and essential oils/fragrances and after a good 5 minutes of stirring you can pour the wax into the mould. Ice cubes will make the wax solidify very quickly and they will leave an empty space  around them  when they will melt. It's a very simple technique , but it gives a very peculiar shape to your candles!

The first time I prepared floating candles, it has been for a friend's wedding : she wanted something special for decorating the tables! As wedding favour, she chose something very peculiar (French hand-made candies) that she wanted to match with the candle colours. But let's spend few more words on my floating candles ... They are made of 100% paraffin with cotton (lead-free!!!) wicks . I've both used primed and non-primed wicks: buying a (non-primed) cotton reel is definitively less expensive. The candles for the wedding were fragrance-free, but I've also made some with essential oils or fragrances (btw, scent throw is not bad at all!) I've been using pre-coloured pellets and kids crayons for the colours and added glitters or other decorations. WARNING : if you use dry botanicals DO NOT put them too close to the flame and, above all, use as little as you can. For the floating effect any container works great ! In addition you can put some decorati...

Tin container candle (paraffin) scented with fig essence! Tin container with screwable lid allows you to bring the candle wherever you go!