How to Make Beeswax Candles - Tips and Tricks from an Expert Candlemaker | Bramble Berry

[Music] hi I'm flower with Big Dipper waxworks we've been making beeswax candles for over 20 years and I'm so excited to partner with bramble berry in order to show you how you can make these wax candles at home I love making these wax candles beeswax is the most natural of all waxes it comes from the sustainable industry of honey farming it's naturally aromatic it's so beautiful and the spectrum of light that comes off of a beeswax candle is like that of the Sun rather than an incandescent light beeswax has a naturally high melting temperature so it tends to burn a lot longer it's also more aromatic in the yellow form rather than the white form but ultimately it's your personal preference as to which one you'd prefer to use there are so many different shapes and styles to choose from when making candles you can make taper candles but we're not going to make those today you need a lot of equipment and a really really deep container and a lot of beeswax in order to make these you can make pillar candles again you need a lot of equipment in order to make these or you can make container candles there's a variety of different containers and vessels that you can use and it's a great choice for beginners the first decision that you need to make is what kind of a container you want to use so there's a lot of really good options out there but there's also some poor choices poor choices might be something that's really tall and narrow at the top this first of all it's gonna be really hard to get a wick down into but also it's going to blacken over time as it burns not to mention trying to get a match down in there might be a little difficult this is a really cute goblet but first of all topsy-turvy and second of all plastic you don't necessarily want to burn a candle and plastic and same with this tall really pretty it would illuminate and be beautiful but you won't be able to light it and it just won't burn well these are all excellent options they all have a wider mouth their heat safe and most of them are under three inches in diameter you want to start to look at the diameter because once you get into wick choices the wider that you go in particular with beeswax the harder that you're going to be able to choose a wick that might consume all the fuel today we're going to be working with some of the containers that are available from brambleberry.com there's a variety of different wicks to choose from these are all cotton coir braided wicks and they're braided in different ways so you'll see that this is like a flat wick and this would be a flat braid there's also square braided wicks that will be a little bit thicker the thicker that the wick is and the more fibers that are knit into it the wider the diameter of the candle that it will burn there's also these really cool wood wicks available my biggest suggestion is to just test and test and test so there will be suggestions for you on brambleberry.com for what wicks to use but often times you might need to test a few varieties to get a perfect burning candle so because beeswax is such a precious resource you really want to consume all of it in the candle that's why your wick choice is so important as you'll see in this candle it hasn't burned all the way out to the edges and so that's not going to consume all of the fuel so not the best whit choice these candles look like they're going to consume all of the wax you can see it's totally melting down there's no residue along the sides that's a perfect burning candle you might look at this container though it got a little dark around the top and we don't necessarily want that and it got quite hot at the bottom as I was burning it so that's not something that you want either you can notice as you blow out your candles they'll crack down the center that's a sure sign that you have maybe too big of a wick okay so let's talk about our wick options these are signs of what you don't really want your wicks to burn these are really really hot you can tell these only been lit about an hour and a half and they all have pretty significant molten pools so as you see I put these on some tin lids because they were so hot I couldn't move them this might burn a table it's this one's smoking it's starting to leave a little bit of darkness and some carbon deposit around the top I just think that this is really really a dangerous wick and so I would almost go towards the other side and use something that potentially leaves a little bit of wax and with this candle you'll see that perhaps the wick isn't big enough so you'll see that there's a big like ring of wax around the edge you don't want that first of all because it's wasting fuel but second of all as it burns down it's going to kind of continue to tumble down it potentially will put itself out but it's going to leave a lot of your precious resource behind and then for me these are just right so there's a little bit of wax that's kind of grouped up around the edges we've got a nice bright flame there's not a lot of carbon deposit down in the pool of wax so I think that as these flames kind of start to move down even further it's going to consume any of this wax that's along the edges of the glass and you're gonna have a really nice long burning clean candle now that we've covered all the basics it's time to make some candles first of all we covered our surface with some paper because these wax candle making can be a little bit of a mess second we've got some supplies here this is just a basic double boiler system you can use any pot that's kind of deep because you'll want to put either another pot that hovers above it or you can place something down in it I really like this this is what we use at our factory this is just a simple pouring pot it's nice because you can melt it in here and it also has a handle that is heat resistant today we'll use it this because I know that everybody has one of these bowls and one of these pots at home there's a few inches of water in here we've brought it up to a steam and I'm just place this bowl over the top and then I'm gonna add my beeswax this is about 2 pounds of beeswax that we're putting into our pot beeswax can be a little tricky to clean so it's really good to just dedicate a few pots to this craft the double boiler system is an excellent method to melt down your beeswax first of all it's slow and low the water prevents the wax from burning which is super great plus most people have these materials in their house this is an excellent way to prevent your wax from scorching you want to watch the water and make sure that it doesn't get into the wax so my general rule of thumb is to just kind of have it at a really like soft gentle boil rather than a big roaring boil that way it prevents the water from getting into the wax and also prevents you from scorching your wax wax will scorch at about 200 degrees or above 200 degrees and this will cause for unsightly wax and sometimes it just doesn't burn as well another melting option is a crock pot or like this little baby fryer the only thing that you really want to watch with these is because warm is just under 200 degrees you'll want to make sure that this doesn't get turned on and just left you want to watch your wax and once it's melted immediately begin pouring it all right so now that we have our wax in our pot it's just a waiting game but I would recommend not walking off too far because this really needs to be tended to to make sure that it doesn't get too hot or the water doesn't boil over or any other things that might happen all right our wax has been going for about 15 minutes and I'm just giving it a little stir to evenly distribute the heat looks like it'll take another 15 minutes or so okay looks like our wax is done we're gonna remove it from the heat okay so our wax is really warm and not ready to pour we want to bring it down to about 155 to 160 degrees add the essential oils before that but I'd like it to cool a little bit more before we add the essential oils if you add the essential oils when the wax is really warm they'll start to burn off and dissipate more so we're just gonna let this cool down a little bit and we'll start wicking our containers in the meantime and the same applies for fragrance oil you want to let the wax cool down before you add any of those okay so we have a variety of diameters of jars here to choose from we're going to use different wicks for them so in this really large jar this looks like it's about three and a half to four inches wide we're gonna use a substantial wick so this is quite a bit thicker than the other wicks I prefer trimming my wicks so I'll just hold it up next to the jar and then trim it at the height of the jar and then so once I have that done you can do this a few different ways you can either pour the wax into the containers and then go through and add the wicks afterwards I actually prefer to do it a little bit of a different way I like to use glue dots and so I'll just take a glue dot and I'll put it on the bottom of it away and then I'll put it down into the jar so this does a few things not only does it fix it in center so that you don't have to worry about it later it also prevents the wick from sliding around on the bottom of the jar so if you do have a jar that's like slightly rounded up it's already fixed in the center and it won't slide towards the wall once the wax gets down to the very bottom this also allows the candle to stay in the container after it's poured because beeswax tends to contract when it's poured out of a nice cool temperature so as I mentioned you want to pour beeswax at a pretty cool temperature between 155 and 160 degrees we'll go ahead and add our essential oils now the wax is at about 165 degrees right now so we won't pour it quite yet but we'll add these and you'll see that as we add the essential oils they kind of coagulate into the wax just give it a little stir and start to allow those to disperse into the wax so I added lavender 40/42 to this I love lavender it's got really calming properties and it makes a really nice candle to kind of expedite our process I'm going to take some of this wax and put it into a smaller container that way this will cool a little bit quicker this will continue to stay warm okay so you'll see that the wax is starting to slightly Harden over on the top this is a sign that this is pretty much at the perfect temperature to start pouring you'll want to torch this off or warm the surface of this before pouring because it will as you pour it in it will kind of get little chunks and have some air bubbles at the top so I have a creme brulee torch you can also put this back into your double boiler so now that our wax is ready to go I'm going to pour it into our containers you want to pour pretty consistently you really don't want to double pour so you get one shot at this I'll do our first container largest container first after I'm done pouring I'll just gently nudge the wick to Center and we made our first candle all right and we'll move on to our other containers slow steady stream and then fix your wick slow steady stream I'm gonna fix your wick and with these last two I'll show you how you can just pour into the container I'm gonna place your wick so because I'm pouring at a nice cool temperature when I add the wick into it it stays right in the center exactly where I want it to be so I'll put that in and so I'm not going to top this off even though it's poured just a little short because beeswax does contract as I explained so as you'll see these are in all different stages of starting to cure and dry so usually I don't like to move things when they're molten or you can see hot wax so I'll just let them sit until they get to totally firmed over once they get firmed over if it's okay for your hands you can start to move them around they'll dry completely it really it depends on the ambient temperature of your home but anywhere from like an hour and a half to three hours completely after that they're good to go you can light them up you can give them as gifts and I find that essential oils tend to cure over time so your candle might smell like something today but in four days time the essential oils in particular will start to kind of synergize and maybe smell a little bit different so things change over time but beeswax candles will be good forever so you can pour them today and give them as gifts a year from now ultimately if you're making candles at home you should have fun it's not about how they look it's about how much fun you have but if you want to make picture-perfect candles just a few things to look at so something like this that cracks in the top that's a sure sign that you may be poured it a little bit more on the hot side so you really want to focus on kind of that Sheen that you get over the top of the wax before you pour it and once it gets to that temperature about a hundred and fifty seven degrees or so you know that your wax is ready to go so that of what happened here also do you notice this dark color this is actually from patchouli essential oil so just know that any additives that you're putting into your beeswax can affect the overall color this one again this weird little hole in the top I just got poured a little bit too hot and then also do you see this Ridge along the outside of it this is a double pore and so we poured a little bit of wax into the glass and we ran out and so we had to pour a little bit more to top it off and so that's kind of what that looks like again this is for your own consumption who cares what it looks like it's going to burn great still and then this has a big deep crack and so again got poured a little bit too hot but also you'll kind of see these ridges along the outside of it not terrible but this is just it looks like a product of may be pouring really really slow so most inconsistencies in your beeswax candles and the way that they look it is a result of temperature so it's either the temperature of the wax the temperature of the room or maybe even temperature of the container we pour most of our candles at room temperature and that can vary and we have pretty good success but I have found that if the temperature of the room is really cold and you're putting hot wax into a colder vessel that your results might be a little bit different than on a warm day so as I mentioned having a creme brulee torch on hand is a really really useful tool especially if you have some of these cracks if it's really deep you might not be able to fix it but something like this looks like I could probably fix it just by turning this on and going pretty slow and lightly at the top of it and just starting to gently warm it up and you can start to fill in your crack a little bit like that so you might need to have to go at it a few times as I mentioned earlier you don't necessarily want to double pour your wax but you can it's not going to be a picture-perfect surface but if you have a little bit of extra wax and you can top that off you can also do and for those of you who maybe let your wax cool a little bit too much it just becomes a time management thing you have to keep putting the wax in and getting it warm and then pulling it out and getting it cool again so that's where I really recommend a creme brulee torch it also can be a little bit of a mess when you start to pour to cool because as I mentioned little chunks can kind of fly out and create a little splash in your candle and then you've got these wax all over the place and the surface of your candle might not be perfect but things like that can also get torched down ok so now that we've poured the majority of our wax we have to clean up there's a little bit of wax left in here and I didn't have a container left to pour it into so what I would suggest is putting it back into a pot of hot water just like this and letting that wax get molten and so once it's molten you can just take a paper towel and wipe it out and kind of keep going back and forth until your Pyrex cup is pretty clean and so the same goes for this pot is you can just put it back on the hot water and get it nice and warm and wipe it out there's also another option and this is something that you can do with candles that have a little bit of wax left over in them you can actually put them in the freezer and this will create this will make the wax really really kind of like brittle and cold and then it will just pop right out from there you can start to wash the stuff with warm soapy water and get the majority of this pretty well cleaned up I hope that this has given you the confidence to make these wax candles at home it's really fun and fulfilling so if you like this video feel free to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the Brambleberry youtube channel thanks so much for watching and to Brambleberry for having me [Music] [Applause] this is the eyebrows save me by the very light I browse yeah it's not I'm confident yeah hi everybody I'm a flower feel free to go to the YouTube rambling Oh doing that and subscribe to the bramble berry YouTube channel for more Kendall videos by experts not that I'm so excited to be partnering with bramble berry alright just like that we're all day

Channel: Bramble Berry

Views: 788,375

Keywords: candles, candlemaking, candle making, candle-making, diy candles, soap queen, soapqueentv, brambleberry, bramble berry, anne marie, anne-marie, anne-marie faiola, beeswax, beeswax candle, how to make beeswax candles, how to, diy beeswax candle, diy home, homemade candle, homemade candles, beeswax 101, candlemaking 101, beginner candle making, beginner candles, 101, big dipper wax works, small business, seattle, wa, candle making tips

Id: FL0CEqdg9PA

Length: 20min 19sec (1219 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 18 2019