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...

One more request from a dear friend: candles that she could put on the table as Xmas favours! In particular, she wanted pillar candles with chunks on the  white/turquoise  hues.  She also asked for decorations m atching the colours of the candles and  having  snow flakes .  It took me a while before deciding what to do (it's much easier to use red, green, silver and gold when it comes down to Xmas things,😂😂😂 ahahaha)... ...and then I thought it would have been fun to use  the  bubble wrap stamping technique  to give the paper a snowy-like background! For the white bubbles: Dovecraft   Crystal White ink and Aladine   jasmine white embossing powder. For the light blue bubbles: turquoise ink  (from ArtNic, #20) and Artemio   clear   holographic  embossing powder .  I've created the snow flakes  with a puncher  from white Bristol card stock, a...

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.