How to make dipped candles| COCOÉCO blog

Light up your life with homemade dipped candles

“I don’t like making homemade candles”… said no one, ever! Candle-making is such a fun afternoon activity, and enjoying your own homemade waxy creations afterward is even nicer. Who doesn’t love gazing at a dancing flame on a cozy night in? We have recipes for container candles and pillar candles on our blog, but none for classic taper (dipped) candles. So, we decided to correct that with Dip It Yourself, our first dipped candle recipe!

You’ll need to use beeswax to make this candle. Beeswax has the perfect hardness for DIY dipped candles! It’s the one and only ingredient you need for this recipe. Pretty handy, hey?

We got a kick out of putting this article together and putting the “dip” in DIY. We hope you do too! Please let us know what you think in the comments section at the end of this article.

How to make dipped candles

Before you begin

We recommend that you wear nitrile gloves and long-sleeved clothing when making candles to help prevent any possible burns.
It’s important to always keep an eye on your wax while it’s melting so that it doesn’t burn. Burning the wax greatly reduces its quality and makes it more likely that the candle will crack during cooling.

Ingredients

200 g natural or white beeswax beads
1 candle colourant chip (optional)

Tools

Good to know!

You won’t use up the full 200 g of wax when making your two candles; some will remain in the mold that you’ll be using to melt the wax. You can leave the leftover wax in the mold and use it to make your next candle. Alternatively, you can melt it down again and add a wick, leaving you with a classic pillar candle!
If you’d like to colour your candle, we recommend that you opt for white beeswax. As beeswax is naturally yellow-hued, using regular beeswax will affect the final colour of your homemade candle.
You can replace the beeswax beads with the same quantity of our premium beeswax, which is sold in blocks.
We do not recommend replacing the beeswax with soy wax. Soy wax is much softer, and it’s essential to use a hard wax to make these dipped candles.
It’s preferable not to add any scents to these candles, as the temperature of the wax must be maintained at 50–80°C throughout the candle-making process. As scents are heat-sensitive compounds, they would be destroyed at these temperatures, and your candles wouldn’t take on their fragrance.
Have fun with this dipped recipe by playing around with size and colour!

Steps to follow

Prepare and disinfect your equipment and workspace.
Seal the bottom of the mold using the sealant.
Cut the wick. To calculate the right length, take the desired height of the candle you want to make and add 8–10 cm. This will give you enough wick to grip while you’re dipping the candle.
Weigh 200 g of wax in the measuring funnel pitcher.
Place the mold in a pot with a few inches of boiling water. Fill the mold with wax. Not all 200 g of beeswax will fit in at first. Pour what you can in, melt it, and then add the rest of the beeswax and melt it again.
Add the candle colourant chip to the melting wax, if using, and mix well with the small spatula.
When all of the wax has melted, remove the pot from the heat, but keep the mold in the pot. This will help prevent the wax from cooling too quickly. Check the temperature of the wax. Be sure to wait until it is below 80°C before you begin working with it.
When the wax has cooled to 80°C or less, dip the wick in the melted wax, leaving the extra 8–10 cm clean. Leave the wick in the wax for five seconds, then pull it out quickly—this will help yield a smoother final product.
Wait a couple of seconds for the wax to harden, then smooth the wick out between your fingers to make it as straight as possible. Now your wick is primed and ready to use. A wick is primed when it is coated in a thin layer of wax, which will make it burn better.
Quickly dip the wick into the mold full of melted wax. Take care not to bend the wick on the bottom of the mold. Leave it in for no more than one second then pull it out quickly. Let the excess drip and allow the wax to harden for a couple of seconds.
Repeat step 10 until the candle is as thick as you’d like it to be. Keep an eye on the temperature of the wax throughout, making sure it doesn’t drop below 50°C. If it does, put the pot back on the burner and gently warm the wax.
When the candle is the right thickness, cut the bottom end of the candle (not the wick end) with a pair of scissors. As the wax will still be warm, it should be soft and easy to cut. Use your hands to shape the cut part so that the candle stands upright. Let it cool, standing, until fully hardened.