How to Make Concrete Jars (UPDATED)

[Music] you choose now to swing your toy you choose now hey guys it's bree from califia candle company and honestly i had no intentions of making any more videos just because the first one was cringy enough for me to make um so anyway it got more views than than i thought it would and i've had a couple of people ask me to make other videos so i figured why not and uh anyway i'm gonna be showing you kind of some updates i have to my concrete jars of doing a couple things differently and then i'm also going to film a separate video of sort of the candle making process and everything that entails in that especially because i use coconut wax and when i was first starting this out and learning everything and looking on youtube there's like hardly any videos for coconut wax i feel like it's all soy or just normal paraffin so i feel like it'll be helpful to have some coconut wax tutorials on there too because you do things a little bit differently than you would with soy so anyway enough blabbering and let's get to the video so first and most importantly you need to make sure that you're protecting yourself so i do have a box of gloves here and a mask that i wear while i'm making the jars of course you need your your concrete of choice i use cement all and i actually put um actually i should say my husband put two 55-pound bags of cement all in here in this tub and i just have it sitting here in the kitchen because i have a very small apartment so it's not much room to put it anywhere else and i don't want it to be outside in case it gets wet out there um it would ruin it so this is where it lives so of course you need some paper towels for cleaning up and then i have solo cups um one i put water in the other one i'll put the concrete in and then this is one of the changes i've made is using distilled water i was using first i was using tap water then i was using like filtered drinking water from the sink and now i'm using distilled water and i have noticed a difference um i was getting these like water spots on the mold let me see if i can find one if i still have one to show you i don't know if you'll be able to tell but you can see these little like spots and streaks and i was getting that from i think from like just the tap water and also i was washing my molds between every use and i don't know what it is about that but it just makes it more shiny too and i like more of the matte look so i stopped washing my molds out between each use and now i don't get the shininess anymore um so i think that if you're going for more of the matte look like this is one of my fall jars like this see how there's no shininess at all and that is just from not cleaning out my molds between each use um maybe like if you're using really heavy colored pigment you might need to like wipe it out with alcohol or something but if you like this matte look i would not recommend washing it with like soap and water because that's what i was doing um probably the most important thing you'll need is your mold uh this one's from amazon i'll link it down below i have a love hate relationship with it i love that it's affordable and it's on amazon so you get you know that fast delivery but it is starting to kind of wear down a little bit i've used it quite a few times and i've noticed a lot of my jars are starting to come out almost oval on this top part just because these are made for resin they're not made for concrete it's a very thin mold so it is not going to last a long time for something as hard as concrete so i am kind of thinking about transitioning into the modern craft labs mold and i actually have a few that i kind of tested out yesterday i'll show you so i made these last night they're still kind of drying out a little bit so um this transition between the light and the dark won't be as harsh but i swirled some gold paint in these um so these are the three inch tall tulip molds for modern craft labs and i just love how these look i think they're so cute and it's definitely thicker so i don't know they just seem more luxury to me i love how they turned out so i think i'm gonna be transitioning to those eventually um i just i probably need to order more molds because i only have four and right now i have 12 of the amazon molds so i'll definitely have to be making more but yeah i love them i'm happy with how they turned out so i'll keep kind of testing these out but i think that is the end goal to to move completely over to these guys um of course you need a paint stick you can get this you know at lowe's or home depot in the paint aisle and then you don't have to use pigment um i was using acrylic paint for a while but then i tried this direct colors concrete pigment and i'm obsessed i love love how it turns out um they have a bunch of different colors on their website and i usually just add like one i have a little plastic spoon in here one scoop per jar and it gives me kind of the shade that i want um so i used this and two other colors for my fall collection and actually i can show you i have them sitting right here how they turned out i think that they just look so even and that's what i did not like about the acrylic paints like i feel like you could get a different result with each jar but with this it's pretty fluid so love that now this guy this is a new addition to my process and actually my sister-in-law she was in the dental field for a little bit she recommended this to me she said that they would use it to get all the bubbles out of their molds so basically you turn it on and it just vibrates and you can adjust how much it vibrates you can see those little pieces vibrating around on there um so i've been using that and i think it definitely helps so you're not sitting there bouncing the mold and tapping it forever so i'll show you how i use this today and i got this on the amazon i'll link it down below it was like i think 60 dollars so a little bit pricey but i think in the long run worth it okay i officially have my mask on so sorry if it's harder to hear me but i just leave this old one cup measuring scoop in here and i use pretty much a full cup almost like right under for one jar probably like that is good so i'll scoop that into my solo cup okay so now i have my cement all in my solo cup i'm going to add my one scoop of pigment [Applause] just like that dump it in there i like to mix it in before i add the water just mix it into the dry concrete just give it a couple little swoops and then i was kind of measuring out my water beforehand um with a little measuring cup just so i kind of had an idea of how much to use for each jar but that also i've noticed fluctuates depending on what the weather is like so now i just kind of eyeball it so i'll just pour a little bit in give it a mix and then i can already tell that i'm going to need a little bit more so just keep adding a little bit at a time because you can definitely overdo it easily with the water and i just kind of keep stirring until i don't see any big lumps in there and until it's the consistency that i would like so that looks pretty good so now i'll move my mold over to the vibrating machine and i'll show you how i do that step okay so now i'm going to just pour my mixture in if you get a couple lumps in there it's not the end of the world you just don't want any massive chunks i go like right under the lip so that looks about good and then i'll turn this on on the lower side and you do have to kind of hold it there because it wants to move around and then i'll go up to like medium i hope you can hear me over the vibrating but you can actually see the bubbles kind of coming to the surface and popping out it's really satisfying also i forgot to mention on the amazon molds i actually cut off this bottom lip with like an exacto knife because this lip on the bottom it usually comes out to like here maybe makes them so hard to unmold so i cut that off on all my molds and they're so much easier to take out um so i definitely recommend that if you find yourself struggling to unmold them all right so here we have my little makeshift workspace just in the middle of my living room um i have some jars that have been sealed some jars that need to be sealed i keep these little post-its here to keep track of when i unmolded them and when i should seal them i wait three days before i seal them and the reason i do that is because i wasn't doing that before i was waiting like 24 hours to seal and i don't think the concrete jar was dried out enough because you can see in this one the sealer was starting to bubble up on me and i pretty sure that's because there was still moisture stuck in the jar that was trying to come out or the sealer not being dry enough too so now i'm kind of extending the process and i'm waiting a few more days between each step just to make sure everything is fully dried out and i haven't had that issue again so all right now we are to the hot topic of the century in the diy concrete candle making community sealers oh my gosh you guys i have tried so many sealers throughout this whole process and this is the one that i've landed on and i feel so good about it i'm obsessed with this stuff it is completely safe non-toxic water-based no vocs made here in the usa it's a woman-owned business and she gave her approval for the use of concrete candles which is huge because when i first started this process i was using polycrylic because i saw someone else using that in a video and just assumed it was okay to use and i emailed them and asked just to double check and they actually said no they said it is not recommended for the use of candle jars and that none of their products would fit that purpose they're not safe to use so i immediately stopped using that one and kind of be in the search the neverending search for sealer so glad so glad that i switched to this one it is seriously the best okay so it's been about three to four hours and it's time to unmold our jar and another way you can tell it's ready is just by touching the side of it and if it doesn't feel hot or warm anymore then it's good to come out and then also i just wanted to show you um those modern craft labs jars i was talking about earlier are drying nicely so you can really see that gold swirl coming through now i'm kind of obsessed with how those turned out anyway okay back to this one so the easiest way i find to do this is just kind of peeling the sides back all the way around and then what i do is kind of grab half of it and just start pulling down and you'll see it kind of folds down on all sides flip it over and start pulling this over the edge until it looks like that and you have a good amount of it over the edge and then just kind of start pulling and it will all pop up like that and give it a twist and it comes right out and that one turned out oval as you can see so yeah didn't really work out too well but at least you saw the process and look at that color i'm obsessed with that color and so this one will definitely be a um tester one all right well that about does it for this video i hope you guys enjoyed it if you did go ahead and give it a like and hit subscribe i am going to work on getting more videos up on here and there will be a candlemaking tutorial coming up soon so be on the lookout for that and i think that's it so thank you so much for watching and i'll see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Calafia Candle Co.

Views: 223,067

Keywords: How to make concrete jars, concrete jars, cement jars, candle, candles, candlemaking, candle business, coconut wax, coconut wax candle

Id: LNnEJ5kUaIU

Length: 14min 7sec (847 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 22 2021