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Making pillar candles part 3
By admin | November 7, 2007
We continue in our saga on making the pillar candle!
Step 4. Adding candle dye
We have chosen a liquid candle dye because it is easy to use. Beware, this dye is highly concentrated and will stain clothing and countertops.
WEAR GLOVES!
We add our dye directly to our wax. For this candle we use 8 drops of red. This will make a great color. We will mix the dye with a wooden skewer until it is distributed evenly.
Step 5. Adding candle scent
Most waxes will only hold one ounce of scent per pound of wax. Do not try and add more scent than this. The excess scent will seep through the bottom or sides of the candle and could burn your skin. We will use the one-ounce per pound formula for our candle.
If we have 1 pound 10 ounces of wax, we will use 1.6 ounces of scent. Using an accurate scale we pour the desired amount of scent into a small plastic cup. We measure the temp of our wax and make sure it is still at the desired pouring temp. We then add our scent directly to the melted wax.
Dispose of the plastic cup that you used to measure the scent. If you leave it on your workspace, the small amount of scent that is left in the bottom of the cup will eat through the plastic and could stain your workspace or burn your skin.
Beware most candle scent is very concentrated and can burn or irritate your skin. Avoid direct contact with your skin and your eyes. We would recommend wearing gloves. ANY cinnamon based scent are extremely easy to irritate the skin so be careful.
We stir the scent into our wax with the wooden skewer making sure it is distributed evenly.
Step 6. Pouring the candle
This has to be the easiest step. It is as simple as pouring our wax mixture into our mold.
Fill the mold up to the line that we made for our reference. Do not pour all of the wax we will need some for the repour.
Step 7. Relieving the candle
That’s right we have to relieve the candle.
At this point the wax has started to harden and we need to make relief holes in the candle. The candle is not completely hardened yet. There should just be a 1/4 inch or so of hardened wax on the bottom of the candle (remember it’s upside-down so the bottom of the candle is the top of the mold.)
We need to poke holes around the wick in the center of the candle. Make sure that you do not poke holes all the way through. Using a wooden skewer create your relief holes.
This is very important and must be done. As the wax cools it shrinks and can pull away from the inside walls of the mold or worse air pockets could form inside the candle. By making these holes we allow proper air flow. This might need to be repeated when the wax cools and shrinks.
Now for the hardest part! We wait for the wax to harden.
Continued!
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