Makin' Melts

I don't want to just be stuck with making candles in jars so last night I decided that I would try out making some melts. From browsing through Pinterest I discovered that an easy way of making melts is with chocolate moulds or with cake cups - so when I bought all of my candle making paraphernalia I bought a couple of silicone moulds to go with it. So far I've had a flower-shaped mould and I'm still waiting for my star-shaped one to arrive.

From trials I've done myself, I've realised I need to include a lot more in the way of fragrances, so for this I used a Sweet Orange essential oil and I had just over half a pint's worth of soy wax in my jug.

I did everything as usual, adding the essential oil to the mixture (for 15 small melts I used 35 drops of oil) and some coloured crayon (in hindsight I should have used a little more but the colour came out alright).

Then once the mixture was ready, just poured it into the mould to cool.

It was a little messy as you can see but because of the silicone it was really easy to clean up and make the melts look good after they were cool enough.

I left them for around an hour to cool in the moulds and then popped them out fairly easily to tidy them up and to put them in a container to cool further in the fridge overnight.

The finished product - Sweet Orange wax melts for your warmers.

They smell pretty good in fairness, I just wish they were a little bit more orange! Trial and error stages at the moment but I'm hoping I'm getting there.

Some stuff I've made so far ... Lavender, Earl Grey and Sweet Orange wax melts.

Adventures in Soy

Last week, I bought myself some soy wax from Amazon. I wanted to experiment further with candle making in order to find a method that worked best for me, so soy was definitely on the agenda.

I measured and melted everything as normal - soy wax takes much less time to melt in the pan, so this was good for me as I'm pretty impatient as a human being.

It did, however, seem to take much longer to set than the other stuff I bought (it must have been some kind of paraffin wax from Hobbycraft but it didn't say on it so I couldn't really comment). I countered this by putting it in the fridge for around 20-25 minutes, which helped a lot with the cooling / setting process.

When melted, soy wax has a very unfortunate colour (I had also added lemon juice and bergamot essential oil to my mixture as I was aiming to make an Earl Grey candle).

Unfortunate-looking melted soy wax ...

Even though I was only making this for myself, I was still a little disappointed at the colour of it. Because it was also taking a long time to set, I was worrying that I had messed with the consistency of the mixture by adding lemon juice, and that it might not set for a long time.

However ... When it cooled it came out a lovely off-white colour like I had imagined in my head!

Yay! It looks nice!

I added some loose Earl Grey tea leaves to decorate the candle - this actually has a nice crackling effect as it burns.

Soy wax Earl Grey candle - decorated with tea leaves.

As for the scent - I used the juice of half a lemon in my soy wax mixture (as Earl Grey is often served with a lemon) and the bergamot essential oil provides the rest of the tea-like scent. The tea leaves on top provide a subtle smell of Earl Grey and also look quite nice against the white candle.

So far, the burn on the soy candle isn't too bad but I need to keep an eye on this for my own knowledge. I don't think I've ever had a soy candle before so this is all new to me.