3 Candle Making Tips for Making Candles at Home

Making your own candles at home is a relaxing and mindful activity, it can save you money in the long term and then after you have made your own candle it will give you hours and hours of lovely candle scented aromas in your home to relax and unwind with.

I started making candles at home in my kitchen with the bare basics, an online brought candle making kit, a few essential kitchen utensils and a microwave. The candle was basic, but still looked pretty good and smelt ok. How things have changed since then!

Over the years I’ve spent hours, months and years creating really good eco friendly soy candles and then candle making kits, so I thought I would share some of my own candle making tips for when you make your own candles at home.

Occasionally I share videos and stories over on our social media with tips and hints for when you are making your own candles, but for now here are three of the best candle making tips for you to use at home.

1. Watch your room temperature

Having the right room temperature when making candles is key. It can affect the way your candles look, and burn. The temperature in the room where you are making candles in, needs to be just right. If the temperature is too low your candles can be affected.

This can be because your candle jar is too cold, the wax will not adhere to the jar and cause the wax to shrink and appear motley and bubbly.

If the temperature is too high, the wax can overheat and not set probably in the jar. Having your making room, candle jars and wax at the right temperature is key to making really good soy candles.

2. Get rid of pesky bubbles

Making the perfect smooth tops on your candles is a candle makers dream. It takes time to prefect your smooth topped candles but when you do, it can be a beautiful thing!

With all candles, making and testing different types of waxes, with different containers and different wicks all work together favourable with the perfect looking candles. However even the best laid plans and recipes can cause a bubble or hole at the top of your candles.

We suggest using a heat gun and gently heating the top of the candle so the wax melts to create a new smooth finish on top. This is a candle makers dream gadget and one which we love to use!

We recently shared this video on how to do it yourself for some extra inspiration here 

3. Use fragrance wisely

Measure measure measure. You can never measure enough when using fragrance oils in your candles. There is a science in making candles, where if you use too much fragrance oil or too little your candles will not only not hold their scent, but may burn unevenly and ruin the wax.

The rule of thumb is that a single candle wax to oil ratio is between 6-10% anything above or below just simply won’t be affective. We use measuring jugs for all of our candles and weigh all of our oils for our candle making kits.

When you are first learning to make your own candles at home, candle making kits are perfect as most of them are pre measured for you so you can just pour and stir.

Making your own candles at home is a lovely way to learn something new, spend some quality time by yourself, and enjoy time together with your family, friends or loved ones.

Most of all making candles is a great way to make long lasting memories which you can remember for years to come.

Becky x (AKA Head Candle Maker at Hazel & Blue)