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.

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.

I like crayons because it's nontoxic unlike the questionable safety of candle dyes. Who knows where it came, how they processed it, the ingredients they've used and the reputation of the manufacturer.

It's just right to scrape the crayon into little pieces since the crayon gives an opaque color.  That specific quality of crayon makes it good when used in coloring papers and just means that it is not intended for making candles. If you put a whole chunk of crayon, you will not see through the translucent wax if the crayon is fully melted. Dye blocks for candles is translucent compared to crayons.

The problem with this picture was that the thermometer became too hot to touch. Thanks goodness it didn't broke when I dropped it. Also, it's hard to stir the wax without exposing the hand with a wider source of heat and steam. 

The metal tab was exaggeratedly glued into the glass. I made sure that the melted glue stick is truly hot and sticky by touching it before using the glue gun. Though next time, I will limit the use of glue stick below and only three dots above.

My Mistake:

Lack of preparation. About to pour but haven't glued the wick and metal tab yet. I'll try to be more systematic next time. There will be a handy outline of steps and checklist of needed materials prior melting.

See how opaque the crayon is! This is exactly the color that I want
but what you see is not what you get once the candle hardens.

It's hard to be accurate with analog scale since ours can only measure a minimum 5 grams per line. One crayon weighs 5 grams. I even wanted to know how much crayon was in this candle. Please give me a digital scale!

The wax of crayon.

I only heat wax to 140-150F. There was some wax in the bottom of the metal cup that hardens too quickly compared to the rest of wax that is still liquid. The wax was remelted multiple times to hopefully have a full melt but I ended up giving up, ignoring it and pouring the rest of wax in the glass container. The hard wax remained sticking at the bottom of the pouring cup with some green pigment on it.

That's probably the wax of crayon. It doesn't seem to bind with paraffin wax. Some candle makers heat their wax up to 180F to make sure that everything will bind well including dyes and some fragrances. 180F is already too hot. By that time, the water is already boiling and evaporating under the broiler method. Imagine your working environment getting hot too. It's also harder to stir and look at the thermometer because of the heat of  evaporating water.

I wanted it to be red but there was a last minute change of mood to a green color. I didn't like the kind of shade of this crayon candle though.

Why use glass candle containers?

• You'll have a better view of what's happening inside. It's easier to see the meltpool.
• Glass is cheaper when bought online compared to tin cans.
• It's classier.

I used glass to see how the mottling look inside. Instead of spots, there was horizontal white lines. It's very ugly with its uneven texture. The top of candle has spots and bubbles. If it's consistent all over, it could look beautiful in a strange way. I was thinking it might look great in pillar candles. Mottling is already getting acceptance in other countries with the uniqueness of design it offers.