April 16, 2013

{DIY} Recycled Candles

If you are anything like me you have 20 almost empty candles just hanging around, kept there because there is still too much wax to just toss it and yet the wick is so burnt it wont light.  So what do you do with it?  You melt the remaining wax and make new candles!  While this is an easy process, it does require some patience.  Wax doesn't melt as quickly as I thought it was going too.

I melted my wax two different ways. I had an almost full jar candle to melt down. For some reason the wick would never stay lit. I just plopped the whole jar in a pot of hot water and let it completely melt.

 I had the water heated only to about medium high heat, I only heated it this hot because I didn't want the glass to break and it got the job done. Once all the wax was melted I poured it into an empty jar with a new wick. 
These are the wicks I used, they were 3 1/2 inches long and can be purchased at any craft store.  The jars were just ones I had on hand, empty honey jars.

The second way I had to melt wax was like this....

 I don't have a stacked sauce pan, but if you do, it would be perfect!  I just put a small metal bowl in the hot water and it worked just fine.  After I has scraped all my old candles the excess wax was put in the bowl.  I didn't pay any attention to the wax color, I wasn't really worried about what color the new candles were going to be. As the wax melted I poured it into the empty jars and then would put the bowl back in the water to let the wax continue to melt. That's how my candles turned out different colors. My bowl was pretty full of wax so again I would say it took about 30 minutes total to melt all of it.
Happy candle making!

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