Milk and Coffee Candles

Hello there! For this week's craft, I tried something a little new to me: candles. Just to clarify, candles themselves are not new to me as my boyfriend and I burn them often at home, but doing candle DIYs is not something I am an expert at. I knew that I wanted to melt pre-existing candle wax into cute containers as creating candles all the way from scratch seemed too hard and like it involved some kind of science, which isn't my thing. I remember that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell but that's about all that has stuck. I also wanted to find candle supplies that were cost-effective so that I could actually make a profit when selling the finished products. So the answer was to hit up the good old Dollar Tree and a wicked good sale at Michaels. In case you were unaware I was from the Northeast of the US, the phrase "wicked good" should be a clear hint. 

While at the Dollar Tree I picked up 5 of these adorable glass milk bottles and 5 assorted coffee mugs. Also, I would like to brag that there is no sales tax in New Hampshire so everything at the Dollar Tree is an actual dollar. It is very exciting. 

Then I went to Michaels (I was there with my mother because she is a great craft store sale companion) and they were selling large candles for $2 each. My mom and I did some quick Amazon searching and mental math and figured out these scented candles would be cheaper than buying bulk wax and scents. So I picked up 3 vanilla scented candles which were a pure white and then 4 cotton scented candles which were a creamier color. 

Then it was time to melt the candles which was not very hard. I don't condone having an uncovered boiling pot of water going on your stove for hours at a time, but yes, that is how I melted these candles. I filled a pot with water and placed the candles (still with their covers on) in the water, letting the water come up to a boil with the candles in there. I felt like the chances of terrible glass cracking issues would be lessened if I let the glass jars come up to boiling temperature with the water but, once again, I don't know science so don't count on that. 

Once the candles were melted, I could start assembling my new candles. I attempted to save the wicks from the original candles to reuse, but they were too short so I ended up buying a package of 100 from Amazon for about $5. I used the vanilla candle wax to pour into the milk bottles as it would dry a pure white color. I had originally planned to dye the cotton scented wax to be a little more brown to look like coffee (as that is that wax that would be in the coffee mugs). I attempted to do this with both brown gel icing dye (I read that you could do this on the internet) as well as non-toxic stamp pad dye from Stampin Up. Both did not work and separated from the wax similar to how oil and water separate when you try to mix them. There are plenty of ways to dye candles such buying colored wax shavings to melt in or buying dye specifically formulated for wax, but once again, I was looking for cost effective supplies so just decided to leave the cotton wax the creamy color and pretend it was coffee with a copious amount of cream in it. Once pouring the wax into the milk bottles and mugs, I used some wooden clothespins to keep the wicks in place as the candles were hardening.

Once the candles were dry I used a sponge and hot water to clean off any drips on the milk bottles and tied some twine around the neck of the bottle and those were done!

The mugs were a little more difficult to clean up as I didn't like that the tops of the candles were uneven and bumpy. So I borrowed my moms embossing tool (it's just a little tool that lets you put very focused heat on a small area) and melted down the top 1/2 inch of each mug candle, which allowed the wax on top to dry smooth. And then those were done too!

I'm really happy with how these came out! Let me know if you like the milk or coffee candles better in the comments below!

 - Rebecca