Recycled Rustic Candles: Part 2

Hello everyone! Today I am back with Part 2 of the candle project I started a few weeks ago. You can get caught up on part one here: recycled-rustic-candles-part-1.html.

This is actually going to have one other part in the future as I still have some work left to do on these, but I will catch up with what's happened recently! Where I last left you, I had started crocheting some cute little koozies to go around glass jars I had collected and planned to turn into candles. The crocheting is still in process as I have quite a few to make, but the step I took care of most recently was the candle-ification.

The wax that I used for this project were these soy wax beads that came in large bags. I bought two 5 pound bags for this project and ended up running out so I will need to buy another 5 pound bag. I did a price comparison of looking at some wax like this at Michaels and these bags that I found on Amazon were significantly cheaper than buying it in stores. This wax was microwavable and very easy to use; I picked up a glass jug with a pour spout from a thrift store and used that to melt the wax. It took many rounds of melting and pouring as my jug was fairly small, but it was an easy process overall. 

To attach the wicks to the bottom of the jars, I used a dab of hot glue on the metal bottom of the wick. I then used a large clothespin to keep the wick in place. For the taller candles, I was having trouble keeping the wicks up as they were just tall enough for the jars and there was no overage at the top for the clothespin to hang on to. My mother had the very smart idea to hot glue a piece of string to the very top of the wick to allow me to hold it up, I can then cut that bit of the wick off when I am done pouring. 

I made half of the candles with just the unscented wax as I know some people are not a big fan of fragrance. I then used a vanilla fragrance oil to add some scent to the other half of the candles. I will be honest that I did not really have a measurement for the fragrance oil and simply added until I thought it was smelly enough.

The unscented half I was able to get all poured and all the koozies completed. To protect the tops of the candles I punched out a circle of parchment paper with a tiny hole in the middle for the wick, This allowed the paper to sit flush on the candle and hopefully prevent any dust from clinging to the top of the candle while they sit and wait for craft fair season. I was also somewhat worried about the yarn koozies slipping off as people were handling the candles so I went ahead and added a few strips of double sided tape between the glass and the yarn to better keep them in place. This adhesive would be permanent if used on paper, but with the glass and yarn it will simply provide a light hold. If someone wanted to remove the koozie and reuse the jar after the candle was burnt, they should be able to easily pull the yarn away from the adhesive and then remove the adhesive from the glass with some adhesive remover or perhaps soap and patience!

That's where things stand at the moment for these candles! The unscented batch is all done and, as I mentioned above, I will need to get some additional wax to finish pouring the scented ones. I also need to finish crocheting some more koozies and make tags for both the scented and unscented batches. In part 3 I will show you all the finished batches, along with the tags and what all the crocheting looks like! Let me know what you think of these candles so far in the comments below!

​ - Rebecca

P.S. Today's photo on the homepage comes from Pexels user Rene Rasmussen:
​ www.pexels.com/photo/pillar-candle-near-clear-glass-window-1405520/