Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Making the Crayon Candle

Some candle making DIYs in YouTube uses crayon in their candles because of its accessibility. It is not proper to use crayons though as its known to clog wicks. Maybe its okay for occasional projects but not for a long term. Besides, a piece of crayon can only color a little amount of wax compared to dyes intended for candles. You need a lot of crayons to have a deep shade while increasing the chance of totally clogging the wick. The flame of your candle will suddenly die if it's clogged. Crayon is believed to be more expensive too.

using crayons in candles

I'm yet to discover if its real though. To experience is to believe. I want to see if it will really clog the wick and if it's really cheaper to use a dye. The smallest box containing 8 pieces of crayons costs 21.75php. I'm guessing that dye is only cheaper when bought in bulk. I hypothesize too that crayons does clog only if you put a lot.

Saturday, August 6, 2016

Failed in Making Whipped Wax

Candle making is known as a therapeutic pastime, but this particular whipped thing/icing candle can be draining during its initial phase. So if you plan to do the same thing, remember to not push yourself too hard and don’t be in a hurry in perfecting to avoid burnout. Listen to your mood and don’t set deadlines.

My goal here is to make icing and sprinkles out of whipped wax. With whipped wax, you won't be just relying to redundant mold to make a unique and interesting design. Whipped wax makes candle more pleasing to the eyes. I was not able to take a lot of picture while doing the whipped wax since I have to be very quick when working with this. Besides, having too much pictures in a blog post is an eyesore.

layers of paraffin slab

Let me start with this paraffin slab again since it's one of the things that is usually done first - chopping the paraffin slab into smaller pieces. I find this slab quite deceiving. You will see 2 layers here (but it’s actually 3). The middle of the paraffin slab is opaque while the outer shell layer is translucent. I am wondering how they processed this in the factory and why there is an obvious layer. Again, I prefer a paraffin slab that is purely translucent in color. There are 2 kinds of paraffin; semi-refined and fully-refined slab. Not sure where this slab belongs.

2nd Candle Burn Test

The purpose of burn test is to determine the quality of the candle and ensure it will burn safe especially that fire is involved. Here you will see the the pictures I've got for the second burn test.

I'm not sure if I'm doing this burn test in the right way. All I know is that it should have a proper melt pool once it reaches the equivalent hour of the diameter of the container. In this paricular container it should be 2 hours and 30 minutes. So far, articles online advises to burn test for 4 hours and repeating till the end of the candle's life. I have to read more.

candle with a long wick and big flame

I wiped the surface of this candle prior this second burn test. So far, the wax was not bleeding oil.

I didn’t trim the candle since it already looks small for me. Because of that, the flame was smoking and there was black soot that stains the metal cup container. It didn’t help that the fire was consistently flickering since the very first test burn. The flame was high. I’m not sure if that was the reason why the right side of the metal cup turned reddish later on. I swiped my finger on that area and my finger smelled like iron. Chemical reaction? I’m wondering whether the flame burned the coat of the metal, or is there such thing?
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