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Refreshing your skills: can you remember the basics?
When it comes to candle making, it's essential that you get the basics right the first time. Having the right equipment and knowledge of the process is what ensures you can create perfect candles time after time. Although candle making is based on trial and error, it's important to get back to the basics and refresh your knowledge from time to time. Let’s take a look at how you should be making candles.
Prepping your glasses
Most importantly, is preparation. Ensuring you prep your glasses correctly before you pour your candle will ensure that common issues such as pullaways, frosting and sinking don’t occur. To effectively prepare your candle glass you need to make sure your candle glasses are clean and dry before doing anything. Next is the important placement of your wick. Using a wick stickum and wick sustainer, place the base of your candle wick in the centre of the glass. Ensure your wick stick ums and wick are in the middle of the candle glass, this is for safety purposes as well as performance purposes. A candle will never burn evenly if it’s wick isn’t central.
Measuring and melting your wax
Fill your pan about halfway with boiling water, be sure not to over or underfill to avoid issues. If you prefer, you may want to opt for alternative melting options such as a double boiler, but this is down to personal preference. Then place your glass bowl or pan on top of your pre-prepared pan with boiling water inside. Pour all of your wax into your glass bowl or pan, ensure that you accurately measure your wax so you know how much fragrance oil you will be adding if you’re opting for a scented candle. Be sure to keep your temperature on medium to low heat to ensure the wax can melt effectively but not too quick. Most importantly, add your thermometer to monitor the temperature of your wax as you don’t want to let your wax exceed 80°c. Make sure you keep your eye on the wax and stir every 60 seconds whilst maintaining the low heat. Remember to never leave your wax unattended. Once thoroughly melted, remove your wax from the heat and set it down on a cooling rack to cool.
Adding your fragrance
At this stage, this is where issues tend to occur. Perfecting the right temperature to pour your fragrance oil is vital. If you don’t add your fragrance oil at the right temperature it’s likely that you won’t get a good scent throw from your lit candle later on. Once your wax has cooled to around 65°c, you can add your selected fragrance oil ; you can add anywhere from 6% - 10% of fragrance oil to your candle – this is calculated by the amount of wax you have used, which is why it’s important to know how much wax you used at the beginning of this process. Just for an example, if you were to use 300g of wax from your kit, it’s best to use around 18g – 30g of fragrance oil. Pour your measured out fragrance oil into the melted wax and stir it in for approximately 1 minute, keeping an eye on the temperature. Be sure not to let it get too cool, aim for 60°c at the lowest.
Pouring your candle
Pouring your candle may seem straightforward but this step is where many problems occur. Once cooled you may transfer your wax into a pouring jug to make the pouring process more streamlined and careful. Before pouring your candle, ensure you have some kitchen roll or newspaper on hand, as this can step in candle making can often get messy! Holding your jug handle firmly, gently and slowly pour the wax into your candle glass avoiding the sides of the glass to ensure you have a perfect pour ready for setting.
Setting your candle
Once your candle is poured it's important to make sure that the candle wick stays central whilst it’s setting. The easiest way to use this is to use a wick centering tool, however if you do not have one of these you can use an abundance of household objects to achieve this, a peg often works well to keep the wick central. Once ready for setting, leave your candle overnight to ensure it has enough time to set properly.
Trimming the wick
Once your candle has set overnight you are now ready to trim your wick and burn your candle. Trimming your wick is important as it will make the flame look clean and bright. Untrimmed wicks are a lot more likely to take on the form of mushroom wicking, the effects of which will dull and obscure your flame. Once trimmed your candle is now ready to light!
To recapp
- Ensure you glue your wick in the centre of the candle glass, otherwise your candle will never burn evenly.
- Stick to the guidance temperatures, don’t rush the process as this will affect your candles performance.
- Weigh out your fragrance oil to avoid wastage and to ensure optimum scent throw.
Use your social media to share your creations with us and use the hashtag #sfcfeatureme to show us what you’ve been getting up to.
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