Betty's Candle Making

Scented candles add a certain amount of elegance to a room.  The candlelight from any candle gives the room a romantic feeling.  However, when a fragrance is added to the room through a scented candle, the elegance of the room grows.

You can use fragrance oil that is available at most craft stores or online for your scented candles.  It is better to use oil rather then a water-bases or alcohol-based perfume in wax because most waxes are close to oil in their chemical composition.  Water and oil do not mix.  So, by using water-based perfumes, the liquid will simply float to the bottom of your melted wax.

The wonderful thing about scented candles is that the fragrance is noticed even when the candle is not lit.  They make wonderful gifts and are appreciated even more when they are handmade.  The process of making scented candles is the same as making regular candles.  You will need to consider which kind of wax you are going to use.  There are several kinds of wax that are available today.  There are natural waxes like soy, palm, or beeswax.  There is also paraffin wax which is your basic wax that most candles are made of and there are also gel candles.  Both of these types of wax can be used to make scented candles also.  Although, with gel candles, you have to consider how much fragrance you are planning to use before you choose your wax.  Gel wax with a lesser density can not hold as much fragrance as gel wax with a higher density.

In order to make any type of candle, you have to first melt the wax before you can pour it into your candle mold.  You have to use a double boiler to melt the wax.  Place a smaller pot that has the wax in it into a larger pot that is filled with water.  Be careful not to put the temperature of the stovetop too high because wax can burn.  You can use a thermometer and heat the wax to be around 170-180 degrees.  Add the wick to the mold.  After the wax is melted, you can remove it from the heat source.  It is now time to add the fragrance oil.  You can add one ounce of fragrance oil to one pound of wax.  This will give you a 6% fragrance concentration.  Make sure that you do not add too much fragrance.  Although it may seem like the more fragrance the better, this is not always the case.  Certain problems can arise from using too much fragrance.  One thing that could happen is that the candle will not burn properly because of the higher concentration of liquid.  You might end up with pools of liquid in the candle.  You can always experiment with you candle making.  You can keep records of how much fragrance you use to how much wax and find you own scented candle recipe.

Using things like scents and colors gives you much more variety of the things that you can create in your candle making.  Wouldn’t it be great to be able to give a loved one a gift of a candle with the essence of relaxation and a calming sent to go along with it?  Now that you understand a little bit more about how to make scented candles, you can do it.