Develop Your Skills With Candle Making Techniques
Candle making techniques are varied from simple to complex multi-stage procedures. Basically, candle making is mixing waxes and other ingredients at right proportion then melting it in a water bath heater; and finally, pouring it into molds.
Before starting candle making techniques, it must be remembered that the ingredients are largely inflammable materials; thus, extreme care must be practiced. And also, the melting must have good air flow or ventilation because there are lots of fumes and obnoxious odor produced.
The first step is to learn about the characteristics of your ingredients especially the waxes. Waxes have their specialties that must be utilized to the maximum; paraffin wax for its low cost, beeswax for its smooth texture and other waxes for their special uses.
Candle making techniques involve familiarity with the different types of moulds. Moulds greatly affect the costing and quality of the finished product. Some moulds are expensive but efficient. Some are cheap but can be used only once, some are complicated but produced exquisite designs.
Examples of cheap moulds are recycled containers of soft drinks and beers, cartons, margarines, yogurt, corrugated cartons and others. Examples of expensive moulds are made of glass, hard rubber, plastics and others.
Candle making techniques are also influenced by the different recipes of candle making. The procedure of forming wax mixture is somewhat simple, but the recipes are somewhat complicated because of the numerous waxes, scents and others.
To get the best possible recipe for candle making, one needs experimentation if he wants to venture into this business. This includes blending different combination of essential oils to produce the right scent based on your taste.
Other special ingredients that influence candle making techniques are:
Stearic acid – this gives hardness to the finished candle. Vybar is another hardener that is cheaper than stearic acid, but harder to find.
Parol oil – gives the finished product a mottled surface appearance which will make the candle unique and somewhat attractive.
Here are several candle making techniques to produce attractive finished products:
1.To make multi-color pillar candle, you have to melt wax mixtures separately with different colors. Press them together in one candle before they harden. Or you can devise a special mold for this purpose.
2.Make floating candles using wax crystals. This does need heating; thus, it can be a project for children. Candle making techniques need to be supervised by adults if done by children.
3.Hand dipped procedure is one of the oldest and traditional candle making technique. This does not need the use of moulds. A taut wick is dipped into melted wax mixture several times until the layers of wax reach desired diameter. This can be done by dipping several candles simultaneously into melted wax bath.
4.Hand rolled candle is done by rolling wax sheets into candles. Different colored sheets give the candle uniqueness. This candle making technique does not need heating, thus can be done by children as a hobby; but again this must be under supervision of an adult.
5.Sand candle is another candle making technique that does not need heating. This is just the act of planting a wick into a powdered wax mixture in a suitable container. Another similar to this is making a gel-type candle. Again here, the wick is just inserted into a container of a gel wax.
Other candle making techniques make food-like candles for different kinds of occasions.
