The Craft Club: Candle Making Part 2

Remember our candle making experience from a few weeks back? Well we had Crazy Candles come out again, since the kids just loved their candles so much. The older kids tried something different this time, something a little more challenging.

Balloon dipped candles. Basically the process is the same as before except this time they used a balloon with cold water in it. The tricky part of this design was keeping their levels even. With each colour they had to make sure as best they could to get the wax to the same level each time.

Then with a new colour choice, they needed to lower the level by roughly 1cm and so on.

B chose to have little shapes cut out of his, which would look nice when/if he places a tea light candle inside. K left hers as is and I obviously didn't get a photo because I can't find one.

Although the process was technically the same the experience and end products were quite different.

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The Craft Club: Candle Making

Aren't these the cutest? The kids had an absolute blast making these candles today! I'll try to explain the process they used, it is fairly straight forward and probably something you could do at home, although it would be quite an effort to set it all up.

There were several large pots of hot melted wax in various colours. The children were each given a wick (piece of string). They had to choose a starting colour and dip there wick into the colour, remove, wait for it to stop dripping, dunk it into a tub of water (that was sitting next to each pot of wax) and repeat, for approximately 15 times.

Then it was time to move onto a different colour to repeat the process over and over again. A little time consuming and a bit of a work out for the arm. They continued in this fashion until the the wax was roughly 4cm in diameter and they had built a few different coloured layers on their candles. Surprisingly it didn't take all that long, an entire candle was finished in roughly 45 minutes, and in even less time for the older kids.

Next was choosing a design for their candle to be carved into. I would have loved it if the kids had been shown how to carve, but he was using a very sharp implement and it would need to be done in very small groups.

Once everyone had made their candles and walked away with huge smiles on their faces we (some of the straggler mummies) were shown  another design. You begin with a stick candle (but much thinner than what the children did and adhere it to a wax base, so it will stand on its own.

Imerge the candle in water, grab a cup of hot melted wax and pour (whilst swirling) the wax onto the candle. Most of the wax will spread out over the top of the water, you kind of need to drop the stick candle deeper and pull the wax into shape, wrapping it around the candle. (does that make sense)

Add a few more colours by working the same way and you end up with something like this (picture above). Much more fragile though and definitely trickier to create.

Everyone had a blast with this, if you are in Australia, check out Crazy Candles to see if there is one near you.