Grubby Candle Tutorial and TS Makeover

I’m sure this has been done a hundred times in blog land, but I wanted to show you the easy way I made my grubby candles using things I already had.  Have I told you lately how cheap I am? lol

I used to have one of those candle crocks- the kind that would melt your big jar candles and spread the wonderful aroma all over your house.  Long story short, moved table, forgot to unplug crock, it fell off, cracked in two.  Luckily the crock was not turned on or that would have been a whole other candle wax mess to talk about. lol  But I was left with 2 big jar candles that I used to melt in it and they had their wicks hid down inside and were no longer able to be lit.  I’m not sure, but I think that I noticed the longer I melted those candles, the less noticeable the scent was.  Is it possible to ‘melt’ the scent right out of them?

So with no crock, I had to figure out how to melt the candle to use for dipping.  I don’t have any old pots to put the jar right in to melt- I only have the pots I use to cook in.  And I was afraid to put the jar candle right down in one of my pots to melt it- I had images of it breaking and messing my pot up.  I did have a small crock  pot that I bought really cheap a few years ago to use for hot dips.  We used it once.  ( on a side note- I saw a few of these small crocks at the TS for very cheap b/c they were missing their lids!  Cover it with a pie pan!)  I set my jar candle down inside that, filled around the edge of the jar with water, and put the lid on top and crossed my fingers!  I checked it a few hours later and it had worked!

(Pay no attention to the grubby water…I had already been dipping a candle and stuff fell off into the water.)

I had a few taper candles that I had picked up cheap somewhere, so I carefully took a knife and scored a line around the middle of one and cut it in half.

The top parts of the candles are fine as is.  I needed to do a little work on the bottom half.  I left the bottom section a little longer than the top because I had to cut some of that off to expose the wick.  I moved the knife down about half an inch and scored a line around there.

You have to be careful to not cut right through it.  I just rolled the candle back and forth putting gentle pressure on the knife.  I could kind of feel when I had scored it enough without cutting the wick.  I then pulled that little top part off.  Then I went to the bottom of that candle an whittled it down a little so that once it was dipped, it would still fit into a holder.

I was left with 4 candles with long enough wicks to dip.

I used a piece of waxed paper to spread my spices on.  I used cinnamon, allspice, and also some coffee grounds to roll my candles in.  I dipped a candle, and immediately moved it to the spice pile and rolled it.

 

Again, dip and roll- trying to cover the candle as best as possible. While you are rolling, be sure you are keeping an eye on the bottoms of the candles to be sure they are not getting too big to fit into a holder.  A little pressure on those areas while you are rolling will help keep that in line.  You may have to strip that part back off and just make sure in your last dipping that it gets covered.

Now after dipping and rolling 2 or 3 times, I still had a few places that needed covered.  I’m not afraid of getting dirty, so I dipped my finger in the melted wax, got it on the bare spots, and then stuck spices on that spot. 

I had to do the same for the very tops of the candles by the wicks- they were a tad bit too long to fit all the way down into the melted wax.  I took the candle and held it right beside the crock, dipped my finger in wax, spread it around the wick and then immediately stuck the top down into the spices.

After I had the candle ‘spot covered’ as much as I wanted it to be, I gave it one final dip.  This time I followed it with a light dusting of cinnamon and then laid it aside to dry.  I will tell you one thing that I will be sure to do the next time.  In the picture up above, see that little pile of dried wax peelings?  Those were from my fingers from dipping and then spot wetting the candles.  When I was on my last one I had an idea.  I was using a top part of a candle, which was slimmer than the bottom parts, and I decided to take some of those wax peelings and crumble them into my spice mixture.  I wanted to see if I could tell the difference from the others I had done.

Well, it definitely worked!  The candle that I rolled with the wax peelings is the one on the bottom of this picture!   It’s almost as fat as the bottom half candles.  The second one from the top is the other top half that I dipped and with just the spices-it is certainly slimmer than the others.  So next time, I will dip all bottom halves first, and then crumble the wax peelings in to the spice mixture to roll the top halves in!

Biggest regret?  Not having more than 2 STINKIN CANDLES TO WORK WITH!!! lol  I will be hitting Dollar Tree later this week :-)

Altogether, it was a pretty easy project.  If you prepare all of your candles at once (while the wax is melting) the dipping and rolling goes really fast.  I bet it only took me 15 minutes to do all 4 of the ones that I had- and that was with learning as I went.

What does it look like in a holder, you ask?  Remember this piece that I bought on Friday at the TS for $1.50?

Well, it’s also the piece that I accidently dropped, and it broke, (allowing me to remove the slanted shelf I wanted to take out anyway) and I couldn’t get it nailed back together right without other nails popping back out, got out the glue, more nails, a few choice words…all that crap, and it now looks exactly like I had pictured it turning out to look like after a makeover!  Like a million bucks!

Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration….maybe it only looks like 20 bucks!