Making soy candles is a fun, relaxing and rewarding hobby. A beautiful hand poured candle makes a great addition to your home and is also a lovely gift for friends and family.
Making a soy candle is both an art and a science and requires the successful combination of several ingredients including wax, fragrance, containers, wicks and sometimes colour. Because we use mostly all natural ingredients they can and do react in different ways causing varying results in your candles. But don’t panic, making a candle is not as difficult as it sounds and like everything, practice makes perfect. Most candle makers keep good notes in order to fine tune the correct combination of ingredients as they get more experienced.
The ingredients we will use are all as good as (if not better) than in most branded candles you will find in stores.
You will be able to make your own beautiful scented soy candles for a fraction of the cost of buying them and have a fun time making them.
What you need
Soy Wax
A Glass Jug / Aluminium pouring jug or double boiler saucepan
Thermometer
Candle Glassware / Teacup / Tins or any other creative container that suits
Wick (s)
Dye Block
Fragrance
Wick Holder
Wick Sticker
Method
Choose an appropriate heat safe glass container for your candle. Soy wax melts at around 40 degrees C and most glassware will handle this temperature. You can re-use your own jars, hunt out tea-cups at op’ shops or purchase some jars from our range. Container soy wax is designed to adhere to the sides of the container, so you’ll want a good clean jar with smooth sides.
Estimate how much wax you will need; as a rule of thumb soy wax flakes melt to roughly half their volume so the easiest way is to take your jar and fill it with soy wax flakes twice.
Place your soy wax in a double boiler on the stove (just like you would melt chocolate). You can use a pot & a Pyrex jug but make sure the Pyrex jug doesn’t touch the bottom of the pot. It is ideal if the handle will fit over the pot edge. Heat your container soy wax on medium heat to 80-82°C until melted. The wax will start to melt around 40-45°C so check the temperature often. We DO NOT recommend using a microwave to melt soy wax because you lose the ability to control the temperature and can overcook your wax.
While the wax is melting, attach your wick to your container or vessel (this is called “wicking”). Attach your wick sticker to the bottom of the metal wick tab on the wick, place the wick in the centre of the container and press down firmly. If you don’t have a wick sticker, dip the tab end of the wick into the melted wax then place it on the bottom of the glass or use a dab of glue from a glue gun.
Once the wick has adhered to the bottom of the container, thread the wick through the hole in the middle of the wick holder & place the wick holder so that it spans the diameter of the glass, making sure the wick is centered. Bend the wick over the wick holder. This will hold it straight as you pour in the hot wax.
Using your thermometer, measure the temperature of the wax and at approximately 80-82°C add your candle fragrance. Gently stir in well for at least 2 minutes. Fragrance load (the amount you can add) can be anywhere between 6% and 10% depending on how strong you like your candles. It is important that the fragrance is mixed thoroughly for two minutes to bind with the wax. All fragrances affect the way a candle burns so experimentation with fragrance load is a must. You may be able to load a candle with 10% of one fragrance without adversely affecting the burn but not with another. Testing is the key.
If you choose to colour your candle, this would be added to the melted wax now. Add a small amount of shavings from the dye block at a time. Drip some wax on to a white surface to view the final colour. Add more dye for darker shades.
Now wait for your wax to cool to approximately 60-62°C before pouring into your container. Pour slowly but surely until you reach the desired level, we recommend using a long spout pouring jug. Allow it to set at least 24 hours before burning. For larger candles leave for a few days to allow the wax to cure fully. In many cases the longer you cure a candle the better the burn and fragrance throw.
Setting tips: Room temperature can affect the setting and the finished look and performance of your candle, so make sure the room is neither too hot nor too cold (a constant ambient temperature of 21 degrees C is ideal).
A tip is to carefully warm your glassware in the oven or warm water before pouring if you wish to help with the curing process. This will ensure that the warm wax is not going into a cold jar and cooling too rapidly.
Sometimes the top of your candle does not set smoothly because of various factors. This is easily remedied by carefully re-melting the top 2-3mm of wax with a blow dryer. Use a diffuser on your dryer if you have one, otherwise be very careful.
So that’s it! Now you know how to make scented a soy candle. Let your candle sit for a few days before lighting and enjoy the ambience and wonderful fragrance from your candle/s. Remember to always burn a soy candle right to the edge when you first use it, otherwise it will only ever melt to where you first burnt it (often making a crater down the centre of the candle).
Never leave burning candles unattended and don’t burn for more than 4 hours at a time.
Enjoy!