Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Getting Wax Out of a Candle

I love candles so I have a few around the house. Most of them are currently packed up except for the Rio Grande candle from bath and body works because it smells fresh and pretty but also because it's almost done and I want the glass container. Candles smell nice but also they usually come in a pretty glass votives or containers that could serve a purpose after it's candle life. Oh candles I feel you, switching careers can be tough but sometimes necessary.


Anyways I did some experimenting with how to get the little bit of useless wax out of the glass container. First I tried adding boiling water. 

And it did work.. Kinda. You could see the wax was lifting and moving to the top of the water. It just wasn't enough, it didn't free all of the wax before the water started to return to room temperature. 

So I tried another method. I put the candle in the freezer for an hour and a half or two hours I can't really remember and this worked much better. When I removed the candle from the freezer the wax had shrunk in size. Just enough so it wasn't touching the sides of the glass any more. 
So I took a knife and ran it around the outside of the wax to make sure the sides were free and the started to chop the wax into pieces so it would detach from the glass completely.
Once I got all the wax free from the glass I threw the wax away and cleaned the glass.
Yay!

Now I have the perfect glass container to put my makeup brushes in! 
I'm excited that I figured this out, I have a bunch of things I could use this for. And it gives me yet another excuse to burn more candles!



Edit: I wrote this awhile ago and I finished the Rio Grande candle. It was a little more difficult to get the wax out but when I did the end of the wicks were glued onto the bottom. I just wanted to show you in chase you stumbled on this because I was able to get them out just a little more work. 

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