Making Beeswax Candles
Beeswax is a natural wax and you can get it in a couple of different forms, blocks and sheets. You can buy it as natural, unbleached, or bleached white. It has a natural honey fragrance. Bees wax is a very high quality wax that burns longer than other waxes. Because it is more expensive, when making beeswax candles some candle makers will add it to a paraffin base.
Beeswax is a natural golden color and is very delightful. Some, however, prefer it white and will choose to buy it bleached. This will be a choice you can make depending on what you are trying to accomplish.
Making beeswax candles can be a challenge, especially when it comes to removing the candle from the mold. The more beeswax you use, the more difficulty you will have. A good rule of thumb is to make sure your candle wax is no more than 10% beeswax.
If you are just starting to learn how to make candles, you probably don’t want to start out with beeswax. Because of the challenges with the molds and the fact that it is more expensive than paraffin, you may want to get your feet wet with something a little cheaper and easier. However, if you are not going to be using molds but making container candles, you may want to give it a shot.
As mentioned earlier, you can buy beeswax in sheets. A really cool thing about sheets is to make a pure beeswax taper candle you don’t have to melt the wax! This is a really easy process which simply involve wrapping it around a wick. This is great if you want to involve younger children. There is no worry of any dangers of hot melted wax.
The biggest downside to making beeswax candles is that they do not mix with fragrances very well. A paraffin candle will smell much better than a beeswax candle. Therefore, if the scent is important to you then you won’t want to use this type of wax.
Beeswax certainly has its advantages and disadvantages. Although expensive, it is arguably the highest quality wax that produces very good candles that burn much longer than most waxes. Once you have learned the art of candle making and become good at it, you will definitely want to experiment with making beeswax candles.
