Making Floating and Mini Candles In our Tropicana Moulds

Floating candles are really easy to make, so have fun! The main thing to remember is that NOT ALL moulds will be correctly proportioned to make a floater! As you can see by our picture, the froggies actually are floating better when upside down! So if using our frog mould, we recommend upside down. For other style/design moulds, you will need to make a "test blank" candle (this can be remelted afterwards) and then see if it floats well. You won't need to wick the test wax blank, just make one to test-float.

What you need:

• Beeswax
• Fragrance if desired
• Candle Colours if desired
• Stirring Stick, chopstick or kebab stick
• Wicks or offcuts from Wicks
• Heating Vessel for the wax

Safety notice - NEVER leave the heating wax unattended. Occasionally stir the wax whilst melting to ensure that it melts evenly and doesn’t burn. Follow regular wax melting/candle making safety recommendations

Instructions

1. Melt Beeswax at a temperature of around 70 deg C.

2. Prepare work area and wicks, colour etc.

• Cut wick into 2 cm pieces whilst the wax is melting
• Cover work surface with newspaper - any spills will absorb into the newspaper
• Lay out a thin, wooden kebab skewer, pop stick for stirring, mould, colour, fragrance etc

3. If using fragrance (and you don't need to use either for floaters) add this now. Stir in the fragrance and colour completely to ensure a clean and even burn. We recommend a fragrance load of 5 % (This is approximately 5 mls/g per 95g of Wax)

4. Allow wax to cool to approximately 60 C degrees, before you pour into the un-wicked mould. Don't overfill (you can see I did overfill my mould!!)

5. Once just cool and set sufficiently hard to unmould, peel the mould back a little and ease out your froggies!

6. Now's the time to work quickly and thank goodness they are wax frogs! As in the photograph, carefully "skewer" a hole into each candle and then remove the skewer - this will take the wick.

7. Now insert a piece of wick into each hole. By using pre-primed wick segments, these will slide easily into the hole left by the skewer

8. Trim wick as necessary with sharp scissors

9. Allow your candles to cure for 48 hours before burning. The longer you wait for a cure time, the better the scent throw will be

General Candle Burning Tips

• Make sure your wick is trimmed to about a 0.5cm (¼ inch)
• It is important for clean burning to keep the wick trimmed
• When you first burn a candle for the first time, burn for 1 hour for every 2.5 cm (1 inch) of its diameter, then extinguish. This helps prevents tunnelling
• Make sure you place the candle is on an even, heat–resistant surface whilst lit. Use a special saucer or plate and never leave burning candle unattended

Trouble-shooting

• If the wick “drowns” in liquid wax the most likely cause is the wick is too small for your candle
• If the candle smokes when burning, and it is not in a draught, then the wick is too large. Replace with a smaller size wick
• If the candle burns to one side, the candle is either burning in a draught, or the wick is off centre

Enjoy!

 

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