Making Candles

"My obvious conclusion was, Fuck Etsy! I'll make this shit myself!" 

-- Joe Valeri 

One night I lay in bed shopping online -- browsing I should say. Someone had posted a link on Facebook to their friend's Etsy site, and I had started browsing around for various things. Eventually I concluded that I wanted to buy something local, something affordable, something practical. Maybe candles... 

My first ever candle - with homemade hemp wick

I clicked around for awhile, checking the prices of various candles and vendors, until I saw one person selling these mismatched, unmelted "candles" made in salsa jars. She had merely collected all the leftover chunks of wax from the other candles she made and tossed the chunks into her husband's used salsa jars. Each "candle" had several chunks -- of different colors and scents -- piled into the jar, with a wick in the middle. But then she didn't even re-melt them. It would be like dropping a bunch of crayons into a juice glass, sticking a wick in it, and selling it online for 6 bucks (plus shipping :O).

My obvious conclusion was, Fuck Etsy! I'll make this shit myself! 

... Candle making ensued ... 

I really enjoyed it, and now I have a dozen candles around the house. I can burn candles constantly and it's basically free. Any color, any scent, any size ... it's very cool -- definitely a hobby I will return to. (Click here to see a photo essay of my first candle.)

My first set of candles in progress - I even decoupaged the glass on some of them.

I'll do more candle making posts to show all the pictures I have. I think I should do one post with all the supplies and instructions for how to make them as a reminder to myself. And then another post with some of the finished the products -- although several of them have been burned by now.