Recycle Candle Making

Candle making is something I’ve dabbled in long time ago but ultimately decided it wasn’t cost effective to make in small quantity. Fast forward about a month ago, we kept running out of candles (we light them a lot since kids love lanterns and candles as much as Todd and I) because Ikea keeps being sold out of tea-lights (and they have the best quality for the price tea-lights!). And anyhow, we don’t even like Ikea anymore so this errand hasn’t even been fun for us. Also, while tea-lights are cheapest to light, I kept feeling that those little tins having to be thrown out is wasteful, and I’m conscious of the metal wicks in these thing being a potential health hazard.

When I was contemplating this issue, I remembered seeing unwanted candles and candle making supplies being sold for very very cheap at various recycle shops around town…which would basically cut the cost issue in candle making. So when we had the chance, we headed over to SCRAP and got 2 big bags full of of unused beeswax bars and broken but unused white tapers for $0.25 per pound! Votive molds are really cheap at $0.59 per mold so I decided to start there since it would be most useful around the house. Only investment was in the wick, I got one without the metal core (made from cotton and paper!) which cost me $6 for a very large spool (enough for me to make hundreds of little candles!).

I already had pots I’ve gotten just for making soaps and such so off I went on candle making adventure.This batch is made from all the miscellaneous stuff that would have otherwise ended up in trash. Ashland picked out all the ones to put in this pot, I think he made a pretty assortment!

The content of the pot turned into the purple candle. The yellow one is previous batch. They are scented with essential oil and fragrance oil, topped with some herbs and shimmery mica powder…because well, they might as well be fun to make and fun light!

I experimented making dribbly looking ones. These ones smell like white tea.

…And I rolled some into taper candles.

The only innovation here is that I used wick that is much bigger than one usually used for votives because I knew that the wax I would be recycling would most likely be slower burning than wax typically blended for votive candles. The wick for tapers are recycled from broken taper candles.