I’m a keen recycler and don’t like throwing things away, so I even have a collection of the remains of candles! Luckily it is quite easy to make new candles out of these. What you need for recycled candle making:
- A wick
- old candle bits
- heat proof container to melt the candle remains
- saucepan
- candle holder
Gather up the remains of your old candles and put them in the heat proof container. I use an old Christmas pudding bowl. You can mix colours but bear in mind too many may result in brown once melted. Therefore you may want to melt similar colours together.
Prepare the candle holder with a wick by tying one end of the wick onto a pen or similar. Place the pen across the top of the candle holder so the wick is in the middle and drops down to the bottom of the holder.
You can use old candle holders or a glass or glass jar works well.
Boil water in the saucepan and place your container of candles onto this. The heat from the hot water will eventually melt the candles. Give it a stir until all the wax has melted. At this point remove from the heat to avoid it catching fire and straight away carefully pour the molten wax into your candle holder. Leave some for a top up later.
The wax may well dip a little as it cools, although tying up the wick should help. Once it has hardened add more wax to level it off. This is how you can create different coloured layers as well, by letting the wax cool before adding a different coloured wax. Don’t forget to trim the wick before lighting.
It’s a great way of reducing waste too, as well as creating your own new candle by recycling the ends of old ones!
If you don’t have ends of candles an alternative is to paint an old glass or candle holder using glass paints. Then add a tea light, lovely reflections can be created this way. Check out this blog post