| This isn’t the first time I’ve attempted to make candles. After my wedding, for reasons that run the gamut from boring to stupid, I ended up with an enormous surplus of milk bottles. My plan was simple: take the bottles, turn them into candles and give them to our guests as a wonderful memento of the day.
So I bought a professional candle-making kit. Then I read the instructions. I quickly realised that it all seemed too much of a faff, and that my wedding guests would think I was some sort of godawful chintzy Kirstie Allsopp knock-off, and that, truth be told, I didn’t really like that many of them anyway. And now all the milk bottles are in the bin.
But although ditching this stupid idea made my life a trillion times easier, it felt like a cop-out. So, with a heavy heart, I decided to have another bash. This time, however, I went back to basics. Instead of diving in at the deep end with a wholesale candle-making kit, I ordered a beginner pack. This was much easier - I got my wax, wicks, dyes, scents and moulds in one go, and would end up with ten small candles.
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The most important thing to know about candle-making is that it takes two saucepans, and you must never, ever use one of those saucepans again. Never ever. You melt your wax in a bain-marie set-up, and the top pan – the one that holds the melted wax – will be completely knackered for the rest of its life. So you have two choices here: either go out and buy a good quality, heavy-bottomed saucepan that you’ll use to gradually build your cottage industry candle-making Etsy business into the success it deserves to be, or just nick one of your mum’s saucepans. I couldn’t possibly tell you which of these I did.
After that, candle-making is a breeze. You melt wax, add dye and scent (I chose lemon, because I wasn’t aware that you can also make them smell like hot cross buns), and pour it into your moulds. Adding the wick is trickier, because you have to thread it through a piece of metal, drop it into the mould and then keep it upright by gumming it to what basically amounts to a lollystick with a hole drilled into it. Then it’s simply a case of leaving them for a few hours, popping them out of the moulds and basking in their glow. I now plan to give them to a selection of vaguely nonplussed people for Christmas.
Best of all, by making my own candles I am spared humanity’s greatest indignity – going into any shop where noxious, perfumed candles are sold. Never again will I have to pretend to be interested in the non-existent differences between scents like Season of Peace and A Child’s Wish. Never again will I have to run through a howling wind to get the stink out of my clothes. Homemade candles, I salute you.
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