You can be as fancy or as straightforward with the recipe as your like. The most important thing here -- is to have fun. Enjoy the process along with the textures and the scents and the touch.
Get Your Equipment:
_ Digital scale
_ Rubber spatula
_ Stainless steel measuring spoons
_ Infrared thermometer / digital thermometer
_ Scissors
_ Hot glue gun and glue or superglue
_ Two sets of wooden chopsticks (not broken apart)
_ A stainless steel pan and mason jar, or double boiler.
Get Your Supplies:
You should be able to grab all of this from your local craft store, and/or craft store and natural foods store.
_ 45 g Shea butter
_ 40 g Soy wax
_ 40 g Cocoa butter
_ 40 g Sweet Almond Oil
_ 1/4 tsp Rose Essential Oil
_ 1/4 tsp Geranium Essential Oil
_ 1/4 tsp Ylang Ylang Essential Oil
_ 1-2 drops Cassia Essential Oil
_ 2 Candle containers about 3.5 ounces
_ 2 Candle Wicks (I encourage cotton). Measure the diameter of your container before you buy the wicks.
You'll want wicks that can throw enough heat to properly melt your wax.
A 2.5-3 inch diameter container is going to use a standard wick that you can get about anywhere. Get wicks that have the metal piece on the bottom. It just makes life easier.
Let's Do This:
1. Grab your candle containers, your glue and your wicks. Take a nice dab of hot glue or superglue and touch bottom of the metal part of the wick and quickly press into the bottom center of your container. You'll want to do a good job here. Don't glue your finger to the container.
2. You can use a double boiler method (I use an old jar because this wax combo gets messy), or you can just melt all this in a metal pan and call it good. The goal here is to melt the soy wax, almond oil and shea butter. DO NOT boil it. Stir while melting to keep this from happening. It will take the shea longer to melt than the others -- so I always wait to add the soy and almond oil after the shea has melted.
3. When the oils are fully melted, take the pan off the heat and set it aside to cool. Before you add the rest of the ingredients the oil will need to cool down to about 165 - 170°F .
4. Once it cools, add your essential oils and stir well.
5. Pour your candles.
6. Grab your chopsticks -- or whatever you have on hand to keep the wick centered while your candle cools -- and center your wicks in the container using your chopsticks to keep the wicks in place.
Ideally -- your wick will be stabilized until it is solidly cool. Having messed up dozens of candles -- I can say with confidence -- if it's not perfect -- no worries --it will still work.
7. Trim your wicks to about 1/4 inch above your candle wax once fully cooled.
8. Decorate your containers as you wish
To Use:
A. Light your candle and let burn for about 10-15 minutes. This should give you a nice wax pool.
B Pour a bit of wax into your hand/hands and then apply to your partner, or your body. This is a nice buffer in the event the wax is too hot.
Keep note -- if you poured into a metal container -- these can get hot (so can other containers).
Candles are like toddlers. Don't leave them unattended.
Have fun. Be safe.
XO-
Dena
