Candle Making – Decorating Styles
Overdipping Candles
Overdipping a candle is a process that accomplishes two things:
- Smoothes over imperfections on the candle from when it was in the mold or being dipped in the wax.
- By using a wax with a higher melting point, the candle will keep its shape for longer while the softer wax burns in the center.
Candle Making Tip:Before you begin decorating the candles be sure that you’ve warmed the candles up. They should be kept at 85° or warmer.
- If you’re going to be overdipping decorative candles like flowers or other decorations, make sure that your wax you will be using does not have stearic acid in it. This will only cause your decorations to be obscured.
- To overdip a beeswax candle, it is fine to do it with beeswax.
- Dip your candles anywhere from 2-3 times to get enough coverage of the new wax.
Creating Stripes on Candles
Another type of overdipping involves creating stripes on the candles. This is a very simple tactic and creates a lovely effect on the candle. All you need to is wrap masking tape on the candles where ever you don’t want the overdipped wax to appear.
To get really fancy, use different colors to create multiple stripes on your candles.
Whipped Wax Candles
Did you know that you can actually whip up melted wax and give it a frothy whipped cream type of consistency and appearance?
Whipped Wax Candles Materials
You will need to have one of two wax formulations so that the wax whips up properly:
- One tablespoon of cornstarch with a pound of paraffin.
- One teaspoon of turpentine and one pound of beeswax.
Whipped Wax Candles Equipment
The following equipment will be required to make a whipped wax candle. Keep in mind that none of these items should be used for preparing food after you’ve used them to make this or any type of candles:
- Double boiler or concealed element heater
- Eggbeater
- Thermometer
- Spatula
Mottled Surfaces on Candles
Sometimes decorating the surface of your handmade candles is something you want to do to give it a attractively distorted look. This is where mottling comes into play. When you’re creating your candles, you simply add oil to the wax.
It’s important to realize that not all oils will work for this and your best bet is a clear odorless oil. Some good examples are:
- Mineral oil.
- Vegetable oil.
To create the mottled surfaces on your candles you simply add a couple steps to the candle making process:
- When your wax has melted in the double boiler or concealed element heater, you will add no more than 5% oil to your wax. Any more and you will create a oily mess for yourself.
- Once you’ve poured the wax/oil mixture, you will then need to let the candles cool slowly so that the oil will have the desired effect on the surface. This means you should not dip your containers into water.
- After properly cooled, the candles can then be buffed with panty hose to remove the oil.
As you can see there are a number of cool decorating styles that you can incorporate into your candle making projects to create beautiful wax pieces of art.
What kind of decorating tips do you have for beginners?
Posted in Make Candles
