Candlemaking Intermediate

 "Make two different mold candles.  Use a different wax, scent, or color for each candle.  Let us know how each turns out!"  

What an educational mess!  Pictured are 6 molded candles (plus 5 over poured tea lights).  None pinterest-worthy.  

Batch 1:  Kai the dog memorial

This one probably turned out the best.  Hubby had given me a silicon fox candle mold for some holiday which I had never gotten around to using.  Emboldened by the beginner badge literature about how to add a wick after allowing the wax harden, without needing to poke a wick hole in a brand new silicon mold, I thought I would give it a try.  This candle was to commemorate my OG packmate who we said goodbye to last month.  I used my tried and true soy wax from Candle Science which has clear instructions on boiling point.  I weighed out extra wax because I wasn't entirely sure how big of a candle the mold made.  I added a CS lavender ember fragrance, but no color.  I prepped a silicon release spray in the mold.  The excess I poured into some flower silicone molds we had used for diy bath bombs.  I had tried spraying with edible silver and gold glitter just to see.  What I was most curious about with this project was how easily the wax would release from the silicone molds and how smoothly a hole could be drilled/awled/needled and a wick threaded through.  Sadly, I returned from an errand run to discover hubby had "helped" me with those steps in absentia.  

Batch 2:  Xaden dragon

Lots of wildcards in this batch.  MIL gifted me leftover candles from SIL's wedding.  They had no documentation of what they were, so I assumed it was paraffin.  Paraffin allegedly takes color better than soy and I had never tried coloring a candle so I gave these a crack.  My vision for these was inspired by an Etsy dealer who creates candles scented to match descriptions of characters in books.  I hadn't seen an entry for the protagonists in Yarros's YA romance series.  The male lead is shadowy and smells like leather, citrus, and mint.  So I poured a black candle with said scents (leather, mint mojito, garden mint, dragonsblood).  The good news about a black candle with recycled wax was that impurities like burned wick aren't noticeable.  The bad news about no-name paraffin is that it bubbles more, shrink-settles into divots more, and seemed to more quickly crack when trying to wick post-process (or maybe that was my light touch vs. hubby's).  The dragon mold shrunk so much, I ended up topping it up with more violet wax from batch 3.  Prior to seeing the shrink, I threw some in 4 tea lights which is my go-to approach for non-wastefully dealing with excess wax.  The dragon popped out of the mold easily and cleanly without lubricant, but the purple and the black segments never fused together and came apart when driving a nail through it to add a wick.  I'll need to test how good this smell combination is at it burns as well, when they were cooling, it smelled like very little leather and mostly orange notes.  Not exactly sexy.      

Batch 3:  Violet pillars (same eve as Batch 2)

On to the female protagonist, the bookish "Violet."  Still using the recycled paraffin, warily.  I used floral violet, ozone, and library scents with a dash of dragonsblood.  I was interested in this reusable putty several books said they used to keep wax from seeping out of candle molds with seams.  Hubby had 3D printed some such molds I had used for a batch of citronella candles for a past project.  I haven't found a great way to thoroughly clean these 3D plastic molds without warping them, so their finish came out chalky, but serviceable.  I found the putty was strong enough to hold the molds together without needing the plastic bands, which makes things even simpler.  I also didn't have the challenge of shattering the paraffin wax by wicking them after they were poured.  The silicon pillar hubby had ordered came out the cleanest and most vibrant purple, however, it didn't have a hole for the wick and the tip of it shattered when I tried to add one.  The smell on these is pretty neutral.  After I had mixed them, I wished I'd added something a bit grittier, like the leather smell.  I wonder if their smell improves or overwhelms if you burn black and purple scents together?  Perhaps we'll find out because I don't feel like any of these besides the fox are polished enough to be a good gift and I want to keep the fox.  

So there you have it.  I'm thinking the upcycled paraffin works best in containers you can pre-wick.  Colors are kinda fun, particularly if masking the upcycled material or following some sort of story-scent conceit, but not something I'd go out of my way to get good at.  That putty is magical, as are having a lot of tea light containers on hand.  But if you're working with paraffin, I might have poured into one of those melts containers without a wick so I could pop it back into the melting pot and top the molds off with the same color and fragrance I had started with when they sink.  I need to figure out better strategies for cleaning wax off plastic molds.  It is a good idea to take notes (mine were 3x5 index cards) on your candle recipe and weigh the final products of your molds so you can recreate or refine it without as much guesswork and waste.  

[3/25 updates]  I have burned several Xaden tea lights and concluded that soy wax holds and throws fragrance better than unknown extraction paraffin and that I had entirely too much mint mojito and not enough leather going to achieve a ruggedly "sexy" throw.    

"Gift a candle to a friend and be sure to let them know that it was handmade by you. "

There are two activities many of these sisterhood merit badges call for that I find I am dragging my feet to complete.  

One is the challenge of gifting things.  What is my hang up?

#1 hubris.  This Twitter-X post craft-shaming sums up my fears:  

"wish i had the confidence of the woman trying to sell this cheese grater as an earring rack on etsy" 

I don't think my sloppy first/second/third/nth draft of something is polished enough to justify saleable and it follows giftable status.  Gifting someone something I made seems a bit arrogant unless they are explicitly asking for the item.  

#2 minimalism.  I have been on the receiving end of so many inconvenient but "character building" gifts.  They are sad in that they emphasize how little the person knows you that you are secretly thinking it would have been better to forego the gift-giving ritual entirely but the Emily Post acolyte in you still feels obliged to hand letter a diplomatically worded thank you note.  The gift card to an alcohol store when hubby and I are celebrating our sobriety streak, the Costco charcuterie board when trying to eat less/more regeneratively harvested meat, the plastic melting toy found at the swap meet that was recalled by its manufacturer several years before my husband and I were born.  At the extreme, there are a few acquaintances where it feels like the gifting gesture isn't an extension of "knowing" or "caring" and more of a transactional dynamic of wanting to bank goodwill and curry a sense of reciprocity when what works better for our family is respect for boundaries and a bit of distance.  The gifts feel manipulative if such a paradox makes sense.  Plus, every day the small human chaos machine walks in the door with a backpack pinata full of glitter-encrusted doo-dads of the moment that we didn't want, don't need, and now need to find a place to store for a culturally acceptable interval before dumping in the landfill or "donating" where in all likelihood many will meet the same demise.  I don't want my handicraft to be a burden on someone else, make them feel a sense of reciprocal obligation, or force them to wince through scribbling or muttering a polite rather than heartfelt thank you back to me.  Perhaps I am overthinking this?    

But as I grapple with my personal hang ups on handmade gifts (handmade Christmas badge, here I come!), I did manage to find a work-around for candles:  think of them as zhuzh or garnish on a more thoughtful gift bundle.  In this case, in reflecting on our coffee chat, I knew my buddy was looking for a good title for the kid's book club she runs, her parents were deliberating on back surgery, and her daughter had missed our space-themed girl scout gathering.  Plus I was looking to practice Spanish and she has been a supportive sounding board so I scribbled her a note en espanol with an invitation to keep/borrow the items as she preferred.  Crown this bundle with a candle, drop it off at her preschool and call it a day!