RobsCreations

After the  Choco soap  experience, I've decided to try cocoa butter in candles (75% w/w of soy wax and 25% w/w cocoa butter). I thought the color would look amazing and very natural, and the scent of cocoa butter delicate and pleasant. I have tried, for glass jars of the same size, a cotton wick or a wood wick. Couple of remarks : 1) the wax/butter mix takes forever to cool down (very low melting point of cocoa butter) 2) Lot of frosting and shrinking (see pics below) I let the candles set for several days and then proceeded with the burning test . Here you can see pictures taken at 1, 30, 90 minutes after burning. To be honest, the candles burned very slowly and I couldn't smell the chocolate scent of cocoa butter. The wood wick behaved better than the cotton wick, nevertheless none of the two burned large enough to form a full burning pool after several hours (a lot of tunneling!!!). Take home message : I don't think it's...

Finally, temperature lowered and I managed to prepare a  set of candles  for this fall . Candles  are  great  for any  occasion ! Halloween🎃, Xmas🎄, B-days🎂, romantic dinners🥂 or relaxing nights🌃.  You can keep 'em for yourself or give them to family and friends as gifts! If you've never made candles before, but you're eager to try,  here you have 10 basic steps to follow. This is  not  a  comprehensive  guide and does  not  pretend to be  a  candle-making  course . 1)  weigh the wax  Do you want to know more about  waxes ? Follow this  LINK   2)  Melt it in a double boiler (bain-marie). Stir every now and then...    ⚠ Do not boil the wax ⚠  Never   ever  place the container with the wax directly on the stove! 3)   A t this point, y ou can add some color HERE , you have a post on candle dyes. ...

I had a very late request for Xmas candles 😓 ⏳⌚ 😓 , but the good thing is that I had been given 100% of freedom on the choice of colors, decorations, fragrance, container 😃🎉🎇 This year, I've been so into glass recycling that I've been using jam jars for almost all my container candles. I particularly love the jars from the French brand La Bonne Maman ( see HERE ) because they are big , easy to work with (you don't have to struggle to stick the wick holder to the bottom of the container) and original ! They have a screwable lid that helps to preserve the candle fragrance and protect the decorations on top. Last, but not least, they can be washed in the dishwasher and you can recycle them as many times as you want. For these candles I've used soy wax ( Click for an overview of waxes ), cinnamon fragrance  (which I've also used in other projects such as in  HERE  and  HERE ), a lead-free cotton-wick, and tiny decorations made of soy wax ...

...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...

This is a sample pack with five different mini candles. From left to right: Candle #1:  b ees wax: coconut oil (80:20)  + cotton wick (lead free)  +  cinnamon candle fragrance Candle #2:  b ees wax: coconut oil (70:30)  + cotton wick (lead free)  +  coffee bean candle fragrance   Candle #3: 100% Soy wax + wooden wick + strawberry cream candle fragrance   Candle #4 : bees wax:coconut oil (70:30) + cotton wick (lead free)  + lavender candle fragrance   Candle #5: b ees wax: coconut oil (70:30)  + cotton wick (lead free) + l emongrass essential oil Each candle has been poured in a mini marmalade glass jar, carefully labeled (safety first!) and wrapped by me. Candle pouring Burning instructions on the bottom and labels with ingredients list Box making 

I tried to make swirls many many times... of course without succeeding! I don't know whether this time I can be satisfied with the result, but at least I prepared some nice candles that a french friend described as 'des morceaux  de ciel' (literally 'bits of sky' ). How to do this? Once I've seen a video (or maybe it was a blog/webpage) in which someone was using the following technique but with many colours all at the same time. 1) Melt and pour plain (no colours, some fragrance if you fancy it) soy wax in your containers 2) when the wax is firm, make some holes with the help of a wooden  skewer  or anything pointy. Holes should be as close as possible to the container's walls, and should be running along 3/4 of the candle. 3) drop some candle-specific liquid colour in the holes  4) heat  the container's wall  with a heat gun or a hair dryer. This will partially melt the wax allowing the colour to blend in. ...

Why fast protocol? Because I've melted the soy wax in the microwave, instead of a double boiler, saving a lot of time and electricity. I wrote a post about the use of microwave in candle-making at the beginning of this year  HERE , but let me anyway remind you few basic things: - NO tin containers in the microwave. Go for pyrex or any other microwave-compatible glassware; - 10-20 seconds bursts at full blast will be more than enough to melt a small amount of soy wax;  - If you still have unmelted soy wax flakes DO NOT repeatedly heat the wax, just stir it for a minute: flakes will disappear very easily and you won't risk to overheat the wax and the container; - the microwave trick works well if you're dealing with small batches of wax; - for soy wax is great. I don't use it for melting paraffin because paraffin takes longer to melt I don't want to risk overheating glass container and wax; These candles are made of soy wax and minuscule pellets o...