A Little Light: Making Your Own Candles For Fun And Profit

Now in our grim economic times, it’s always good to know a few skills that would help you earn or save an extra buck or two. These skills can range from anything like being a skilled transcriptionist or making soap. Creating your own candles at home is one of the simpler skills you can learn.

It should also be noted that candle-making is also often treated as a hobby by some people. It’s good to be able to relax and earning money from something that relaxes you is often a good thing.

So how do you start? Well, here’s a short list of what you’ll need: a double boiler, some wax – usually paraffin but there are other waxes available on the market, short wicks, molds for the wax, and, if you’re feeling confident, some perfume or dyes.

Let’s start with a double boiler. You can probably buy something like it one the market but if you’re pinching pennies, setting something up as a double boiler is simple. All you have to do is fill a large low boiling pot with water and place a coffee can or something similar in the center. That’s where you boil the wax. Make sure that the boiler you have in the pan is steady and standing, not floating. The water level should be enough to provide water but not have it disrupt melting the wax.

Once that’s ready, you just dump the wax into the center boiler and wait for it to melt. You can acquire fresh wax from different sources: beeswax, fresh paraffin wax, and other wax products are available on the market. You can even recycle old wax from spent candles. Just cut up the wax chunks into small manageable pieces so that they would melt faster. A good starting weight that you can work with would be a half-pound of any wax that you’re using.

Once you have completely melted the wax you can dump mix in anything that needs to be mixed. Dyes are usually put in during this stage to give the candles some color. Aromatic mixtures are also put in this to provide various scents when you are trying to make scented candles. When you’re starting out however, it is best to begin with simple wax candles. If you do want to be fancy on your first try. Crush a few crayons and mix them into the wax with a stick or something similar. Never use a cooking instrument when making candles unless you don’t plan to use it again.

Now take your molds – this can be anything from siple cups to shaped bowl, and pour in the wax. Be careful in selecting your molds. Empty cans are one of the products yo be avoided. You have to make sure your mold is something that can easily be broken or something from which your candles can be easily extracted from. A simple tip is to place some waxpaper around the inside of the mold so as to facilitate easy extraction.Another tip is to look for molds that have wide mouths so as to make sure your candles can be easily taken
While the wax is cooling, you will have to place the wicks. It’s pretty simple really – you just dip the long wicks into the wax mixture as it cools. Cut them a bit longer tha your mold so you can be assured that your candle’s wick can be lit.

And there you are – candlemaking made easy.