In Which I TRY to Make Candles

I have a book on candlemaking that I've had since the fifth grade which was the first and last time I tried on my own to make candles. I took a class in beekeeping at the John Campbell Folk School. Virginia Webb taught the class. In between learning about the bees, we made candles, but I never had to wick the candle molds.

My wonderful daughter, Valerie, gave me a rubber mold for votive candles two Christmases ago and I haven't ever used it (I'm a little cowed by it). Today I got it out to make the effort. I tried and tried but couldn't for the life of me get the wick to go in the tiny holes punched in the bottom of the candle mold.

I called my friend Martha Kiefer, Georgia's 2007 beekeeper of the year. Martha makes gorgeous candles. Martha said to use a yarn or upholstery needle to thread the wick into the mold. Martha also advised me to wax the wicking. I was melting wax for my wax block so it was no big deal to add wicking to the leftover melted wax.

The waxed wick easily threaded through the eye of the yarn needle.


Then I poked the needle into the hole in the bottom of the candle mold.


I melted some of my lovely solar melter wax and look what I got as a result! I only made these four but now at least I know how to do it.

Then, feeling my oats and feeling quite inspired, I thought why not make dipped tapers. The examples below illustrate exactly why not. This was my first attempt. I can't wait and do plan to melt these back to liquid and try again.

The problem is that as I dipped the taper, a drip started lengthening on the bottom of the taper, thus making it harder to dip the taper as deep as I would like. There's got to be a way to avoid the candle growing in that direction.

I'll check the Internet and try these again. It was fun, just the end result isn't the lovely taper I was expecting!