RobsCreations

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. ...

The type of wax, the diameter of the candle, the wick's size and the matter (cotton, wood, etc), all affect the burning properties of a candle.  Focusing on the wicks... usually suppliers provide WICK CHOICE GUIDES, but be aware that these guides are supplier-specific!!! I have to admit that the only way to sort this out is by testing the different wicks! This example should help you understand if you did the right choice (see picture). These candles are both made of soy wax.  Left: OK  Right: small pool of melted wax, WRONG

Waxes There are plenty of waxes with different features, so the choice is entirely up to you and this post doesn't pretend to be an encyclopedia of candle-making :-) I don't like to 'label' waxes as natural or non-natural, because also paraffin derives from something, the petroleum, that actually exists in nature! I prefer to refer to them as vegetal-, animal- and mineral-derived waxes. Among plant-derived ones you can find soy wax, colza wax and palm wax (and more). Beeswax is clearly from animal sources. And paraffin , as above-mentioned, is made of hydrocarbons, (mixtures of alkanes usually in a homologous series of chain lengths). It is refined from petroleum by vacuum distillation.  'Petroleum ( Wikipedia definition ) (L. petroleum, from early 15c. "petroleum, rock oil" (mid-14c. in Anglo-French), from Medieval Latin petroleum, from Latin: petra: "rock" + oleum: "oil") is a naturally occurring, yello...