Blog - Learn How To Make Soy Candles at Home

How to Make Soy Mason Jar Candles

May 28, 2018 by SoyCandleMakingTime 28 Comments

Mason jar candles are beautiful and go great with a country theme! We’ll be using mason jars in this recipe , but you can pretty much use any jar or glass as long as the glass isn’t too thin. You’ll want to use jars, or glass that can withstand heat. You’ll need to experiment with the wick size but I’ve listed the wick size below that has worked great for me in soy candles made using 8 and 16oz Square Mason Jars. For in depth wick sizing instructions as well as more recipes and techniques,my book “The Soy Candle Making Book” is a must have.

Soy Mason jar candles are excellent for gifts!

Making mason jar candles with soy wax

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Let’s get to it! I have been making my own soy candles for several years, and I am going to show you how to make mason candles at home with a tried and true recipe that I used when I was selling my soy candles, and that I still use. Keep in mind that there are different types of soy candle waxes and this recipe is meant for the specific wax I mention in the supplies. You can use this recipe with other soy waxes, but the melting and pouring temperatures may vary for best results.

First let’s look at some

Tips for Soy Candle Making Success

Fragrance is key here. You need to make sure you use quality fragrance oils in your soy candles. Dollar store, and even craft store fragrance oils won’t cut it! You need to buy your oils from a candle making supplier. There are quite a few online, and some have store fronts you can go and visit as well. You want to look for oils that give a good fragrance throw in soy wax specifically. Visit our article on Best Fragrance Oils for Soy Candles to learn more.

The other question I hear a lot is whether you can use essential oils when you make soy candles. Yes, you can, but should you? I don’t disagree that there are benefits in aromatherapy, but once the essential oils are burned in a candle, the oil becomes useless, and, in my research, it could also become harmful to breath in. I have tried a few essential oils, but they don’t give off as much fragrance and they are expensive! So my advice is to just use fragrance oils that were meant for candle making.

As I said earlier, if you are using jars other than mason jars for your container candles, please be sure that they are heat safe. You don’t want shattered glass and possible fire! You can find great prices on square mason jars and other types of candle making jars by checking out some wholesale candle making suppliers here

If you don’t have wick stickers that I suggest below, you can use a hot glue gun to attach the wick to the bottom of the jar or glue dots.

Supplies to Make Soy Mason Jar Candles:

Scale, digital preferred (I love the Escali digital scale. Battery lasts forever!)
Candy thermometer
High temp resistant Rubber Spatula for stirring and scraping wax out when pouring.
Metal pour pot
Metal cooking pot
1 lb Soy Container wax (I use 100% Midwest Soy Container Wax with this recipe)
1 oz candle Fragrance Oil
Candle wax dye
Two 8oz square Mason Jars or other canning type jars
2 Candle wicks for soy wax such as HTP 105 or CD-18
Wick Stickers to stick the wicks to the bottom of the jars
2 long chip clips to keep the wick centered in the jar while the soy candles are cooling.

Soy Mason Jar Candle Directions:

Gather your candle supplies and put some wax paper down on the counter
Put your Mason jars on the wax paper
Put wick stickers on the bottom of the metal wick tab
Center wick and place one in each jar pressing firmly so that the wick sticker will adhere to the jar properly. Sometimes it won’t if the jar is too cold so you may need to warm the jar up a bit first.
Put your Pour Pot on the scale and 0 it out. Pour 1 lb of wax into the pour pot.
Set your cooking pot on the stove and pour water into it so that it is about 1 and a half inches deep.
Set your Pour pot with the wax in it, inside the cooking pot and turn stove to medium low.
Set your candy thermometer in the pour pot. Set a timer for about 10min. So you don’t forget about the wax and keep an eye on the thermometer.
When the thermometer reaches 180 degrees, take the pour pot out and set it on the scale again and 0 it out.
Next add your one ounce of fragrance oil (by weight) and stir well.
Now add the dye before the wax cools below 165 degrees. If it has already cooled too much, just set the pour pot back into the pan of water and heat it back up to 170-180 degrees.
Stir the dye well and then let the wax sit and cool.
When the soy wax reaches 95-110 degrees it is time to pour into the candle jars. Stir a few times again first. Slowly pour the soy wax into your mason jars. Pouring slowly makes sure that you don’t have any air bubbles. Once you have filled your mason jars you can carefully put the chip clip on each candle wick to keep it centered in the jar while cooling.
Let the soy candles cool for at least an hour before taking the clips off and trimming the wicks to about 1/4 inch.
Let the soy candles cure at least 24 hours before burning them. A couple of days is ideal.

You can make mason candles for yourself, as gifts, or sell them! As always, let me know if the directions are clear enough or if you have any problems or questions with your candles!

Want more soy candle recipes and in depth instruction?

Download The Soy Candle Making Book today!

What are The Benefits of Soy Candles

March 29, 2018 by SoyCandleMakingTime 4 Comments

What’s so great about soy candles? Why are they different than the regular candles (paraffin) you find in stores? I mean, paraffin candles are cheaper and some even smell just about as good. Are there real benefits of soy candles?

You bet there are!

Soy vs Paraffin Candles

Using soy wax candles is a great way to help our environment and our farmers!

Unlike paraffin wax, natural soy wax comes from right here in the USA from our own soybean farmers.

So in addition to using a completely natural soy wax that is safe for you, is a renewable, sustainable resource, and gives us a little less dependence on crude oil, it also helps our own US economy by helping our farmers.

You’ll also find that soy candles burn up to twice as long as paraffin candles. For example, my soy tealights burn from 7-8 hours! Compare that to a normal paraffin tealight that only burns for 4 hours at most (believe me, I’ve tested!). This is because soy wax has a much lower melting point and in turn, burns cooler than paraffin wax.

So even though soy candles might be more expensive, they burn up to twice as long as regular candles so it actually evens out and you really aren’t spending much more for a better quality candle.

With soy candles, you will also get little to no soot when burned properly and soy wax is much easier to clean up if spilled! Just take a little soap and water and possibly a hair dryer and- Whala! No more hard, dried paraffin wax that may take scissors to cut it out of the carpet!(I won’t guarantee the dye won’t stain if there is dye in the candle)

There are other kinds of natural candles too that are great for our environment. Soy wax candles are the least expensive among the natural wax candles, but there’s Beeswax candles ,Palm Wax candles and Coconut Wax candles that I’ve heard great things about also, as well as mixing these waxes with soy!

Check out my first time making beeswax candles here!

So when it comes to the benefits of soy candles vs regular candles? I’ll take the soy please 🙂

As always, any questions, just leave me a comment or contact me 🙂

How to Melt Soy Wax for Candle Making

March 6, 2018 by SoyCandleMakingTime 3 Comments

What’s the best way for melting soy wax? In a double boiler setup or in the microwave?

Soy wax is so versatile that you can melt it in the microwave, use a double boiler setup or a Presto Pot. Melting in the microwave is ok, but it is much harder to gauge the temperature. You don’t want to get the wax too hot, so you’ll need to keep checking it with a candy thermometer.

I like to melt soy wax in a double boiler setup using a pour pot and setting it in a pan that has about an inch of water in it. This the way the wax heats evenly and you can keep the candy thermometer in it and keep an eye on the temperature. Some do not recommend melting soy wax using a gas stove because of the open flame, but I’ve had many people in our soy candle making group say that it is perfectly fine. Just be sure to use caution no matter what type of stove you use.

If you are only making one soy candle, then the microwave may be fine. If you are melting more soy wax than that or are making candles to sell, then you should be using the double boiler method or Presto Pot.

Now for the wonderful Presto Pot. This is excellent for melting soy wax for larger batches of candles, and it is used by many professional chandlers. Soy wax works great in these because it is easy to clean out with hot water and soap. You’ll need to add a spigot to the Presto Pot in order to use it for melting soy wax for candle making. Then you can just melt unscented, uncolored wax in the pot (Do not use fragrance oil and dye in the Presto Pot), and then pour the amount of wax you need through the spigot, into your pour pot. Then you can add fragrance oil and dye to the melted wax in the pour pot.

You can get a Presto Pot on Amazon, or at your local Walmart, Target or other similar store.

Here is a link to instructions on adding a spigot to your Presto Pot, courtesy of Peak Candle Supplies:

www.candletech.com/candle-making/tips-and-tricks/do-it-yourself-wax-melter/

What’s your favorite way to melt your soy wax? Leave a comment below!

How to Fix Sink Holes in My Soy Wax Candles?

September 15, 2017 by SoyCandleMakingTime 4 Comments

Those pesky sink holes! Maybe you get them a lot, if so, I will be posting an article very soon on what to do to minimize or eliminate that issue. Sometimes though, we do everything right, and still there’s that odd candle or two (or more….) that gets a sink hole!

In this video, I broke out my hair dryer (I never use it for my hair lol I prefer to air dry!), and that works fine, but an even better tool to have is a heat gun (you can get them on Amazon here). You can also just save some wax from your candles and use the extra to fill in some tops once they are cooled.

So….no need to get too upset about the sink holes in your wax! It’s a pretty simple fix and you don’t need to totally remake the candles 😉

In the video, you can also see that pour temp plays a big role in whether you get sink holes or not. The candle on the left was poured at 150 degrees F, and the candle on the right was poured at 125 degrees. It is going to depend on what soy wax you are using too. I used Ecosoya CB Advanced and you can see that it does better poured at a hotter temperature, while some soy waxes do better poured at a cooler temp.

Hope this helps! Happy Candle Making!

P-100 Soy Wax Review-How Well Does It Work For Votives, Melts and Pillar Candles?

June 28, 2017 by SoyCandleMakingTime 2 Comments

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When I started making soy votive candles in 2009, I used the soy votive blend from Candlesoylutions.com. It was made by a company called Enchanted Lites. In 2013, Enchanted Lites went out of business and another company took over their waxes, except the votive blend. I had always had good results with the EL votive wax, so I was pretty disappointed when I found out. I was, however, able to test out a couple different soy votive/pillar waxes thanks to Candlesoylutions providing me with some samples, as they were going to have to find something to replace the EL wax. The only one that tested excellent at the time was the Ecosoya PB (pillar blend), but that was the most expensive option. And then, they got their hands on a votive wax blend called P-100 soy wax . I was able to get a sample of that as well and it is excellent! Even better than the Enchanted Lites votive blend in my opinion.

The instructions say to pour hot, like I normally do with a soy votive/pillar blend wax, to get a shiny smooth look. The instructions also say to pour a bit cooler to get sort of a “mottled” look. When I poured at the normal high temp of around 170 degrees, my votives turned out beautiful. I also tried the lower temp to see what they meant by a “mottled” look, and it’s basically just that they look frosted, but not really in a nice way, so I wouldn’t recommend pouring at the lower temp. Of course you can try it for yourself and see what you think 🙂

You can also use this wax for soy pillar candles as well. I’ve made several pillar candles with it and they’ve turned out great. For a 3×3.5 inch pillar I use Eco 14 wick from an unwaxed spool and so far they always burn excellent (provided I don’t let them burn too long lol). The price is also less than the Ecosoya PB, so that’s a plus.

Overall, I definitely recommend the P-100 soy votive/pillar blend

Below are some pictures of the votives, melts and pillars I’ve made with the P-100 soy wax.

P-100 Soy Wax Votive Candles

The soy votive candles below turned out really nice. The instructions say to pour at 175 F for a smooth look, pour at 145 F. for a “mottled” look, and that if you heat the molds before pouring at 175 they’ll be more shiny. The votive on the far left was poured at 175 unheated molds. Middle: poured at 175, heated mold and Right: poured at 145 unheated mold.

I didn’t see any difference with the heated and unheated molds at 175 degrees, but they both turned out nice and smooth looking. The one in the middle is little rough around the top edge, but that’s because I didn’t quite fill it enough.

The one on the right has slight “mottling” but to me it doesn’t look very nice and it’s mainly on the bottom.
I’ll try pouring even cooler next time and maybe it’ll give more of a neater effect.

P-100 Soy Wax Melts

Next we have some soy wax melts/tarts I made with P-100 soy wax. Very smooth and shiny when poured at 175-180 degrees F. I love these! These wax melts are gorgeous and the molds are just candy molds I picked up at Hobby Lobby.

P-100 Soy Wax Pillar Candles

Last, but not least, P-100 soy wax makes beautiful soy pillar candles!

Here’s a short clip of one burning. Sunflowers and Seamist fragrance from Candle Cocoon, and it had a great throw!

Here are a couple more pictures of some other stunning soy pillar candles I made with P-100

There you have it! There really aren’t many soy votive/tart/pillar blends to choose from , but P-100 is an excellent choice!

You can get it from Candlesoylutions.com or American Soy Organics.

Have you tried it? What do you think? Leave a comment below!