Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Mason Jar Candles

After talking to a friend about how I made the candles I decided I should do a little post about it.
With it being a very expensive time of year for us, with 8 kids and 7 grandchildren and having to mail all of our packages to Ontario. I decided to save some money decorating the house for Christmas.

I had seen these candles online and thought they were so cute, I decided to make them. I love mason jars and have them all over the house and use them for just about everything. I actually wrote a post about it on my blog last year.
 Here is the post if you did not see it   http://www.tobeystreasure.com/2012/07/mason-jars.html


Making the candles was a lot of fun and I love how they turned out. As you can see from my last post, I love Anne Sloan paint and have been using it on everything. Didn't the bottles painted with Anne Sloan Chalk paint look amazing. Hubby and I went to Montana's for supper the other day and I spotted an almost empty crown royal bottle behind the bar.I thought with its design it would look cool painted. I made my husband order a drink and asked the waiter for the empty bottle. He probably thought I was nuts, hubby thought I was. But I got the bottle and I can't wait to see what it looks like painted. Will post it when I am done. OK back to the candles.


Take any empty glass mason jar and give it a coat of chalk paint. I gave these two coats of paint.
Once they are dry take fine sandpaper and just sand off where the letters are embossed on the glass. I also sanded a bit around the rim and where the lid screws on.



As you can see I did some in Anne Sloan pure white and some in Anne Sloan Duck egg blue. I did the small jars for candles and I painted the larger jars to use as a decoration or to store things in.
If you read my post on mason jars, you will see the many things that these jars can be used for.

After I sanded off the writing on the jars, I gave them a coat of clear wax and polished them with a cloth. Next came the wax, I went to Michael's craft store because I had heard of these wax shavings. Apparently you just microwave them and voila you have wax candles, just add a wick. I thought how easy can that be. The container was $14.00 which I thought was expensive, but since I had everything else at home this would be my only expense so I bought it. I put the wax in a microwaveable container and yes it was pretty easy. 2 minutes later I had wax, but the package only made one candle. That's right people, a whole package for $14.99, and it makes one freakin candle, I was pissed

Ok now what do I do, its late at night, I am in my jammies and I want to make candles. Hubby heard me cursing from the kitchen so he stayed clear. But after I started banging cupboards and drawers through the whole house he did ask me what the hell I was doing. So I told him how I had been totally ripped off and now I was fixing the problem. And he said just how are you fixing the problem, by making so much noise I can't hear the TV. (that is quite a dilemma to my couch potatoe, TV addicted hubby). Well I said, I am looking for candles and I am going to melt them.
He looked at me like I was totally insane. He said let me get this straight, you are going to melt a whole bunch of candles down to make candles, even though they are already candles. I said yes that's exactly what I am going to do. He just shook his head and got the hell out of the kitchen.





So just let me say I do own a lot of candles, which is good. Don't have to go tear a strip off anyone at Michael's. Which I would have done in my jammies if they were open. Good thing they were closed.
So I started to melt the candles down, wick and all lol . I just picked the wicks out when I was done. Some of the wicks I reused after they had dried, some were too short for the jars.

Some of my candles were already scented so I did not have to add any scent to them. I even used tea lights that I had bought bags of from the salvation army. I use the tea lights in the summer outside and I had two bags of them that I got for $1.00 each, they made 5 candles. In your face Michael's, 5 candles for $2.00, not one candle for $14.00.



These tea lights were not scented so I added some vanilla scent, its the bottle you see in the background. The other candles I had were different colours and scents so I melted all of them separately and made individual candles with colours and scents.

 
 
First I put the wick in the jar, I secured it to the jar by dipping the metal in the hot wax. You can also use a dab of glue to secure the wick to the bottom of the jar.
And to make sure the wick does not fall over when your pouring the wax in. I put strips of string across and wrapped the tip of the wick around it. leave this on while they dry and reposition it in the centre if it starts leaning over a bit. You can use sticks or Popsicle sticks to do this as well.
 
 
You can see the different candles will give me different colours and scents for my mason jars.
 
 
Here are a few of the candle that have already been poured and one that hasn't
Do you see the little bit of purple in the bottom of the first jar
I wanted to see if you could add food colouring to wax to get different colours
IT DOES NOT WORK lol
Dye might, but I did not have any
If anyone knows how you do colour wax, please let me know
I would love to do candles in Anne Sloan colours
 
 
Next I used some twine and some small Christmas ornaments I already had
 (I bought two big bags of Chrismtas ornaments from Salvation Army for $2.00 a bag)
They are a mismatch of ornaments but it works great for this project
And I have a bunch left over to decorate the tree
 
 
 
I wrapped the twine around the candle and glued it in place
Then I wrapped another piece around with the Christmas ornament attached and tied a bow
 
 
I made this candle for my friend Bobby Jo
Bobby Jo was the first friend I made after moving here and she has made being away from family and friends a lot easier. She is a very talented lady with a heart of gold and I am going to miss her terribly when we move back
She is the owner of Sew Tied Up
You can see the post I did about Bobby Jo by clicking on this link http://www.tobeystreasure.com/2012/08/a-stunning-sewing-room-and-very.html
 
 
 
I love my mason jar candles and plan on making more. I drained my supply of candles so I will be searching the thrift stores for more candles to melt down
 
If you do make these, I would love to hear from you and please send me pics.
Wait to you see my Christmas Tree
Hubby really thinks I have lost it hehe
 
Happy picking, painting and candle making
 
hugs
 
 
and lil Maggie May
 
 
 
I found this bulldog hand puppet at Salvation Army too
Maggie loves it and her and Daddy have fun playing with it
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 





4 comments:

  1. Hi Tobey, I've followed u for awhile now, really love your blog. As kids we made candles from the wax blocks my Mom bought for sealing jam. We used old crayons to colour the wax. We even beat the wax to make it like icing and covered the outside of our candles with the beaten wax! This was ages ago & if I remember the colours turned out pastel, maybe we just didn't have enough crayons.

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    1. Thank you so much for commenting, it is so nice to know that people are reading my posts. You didn't sign your name, would love to know who you are. Thanks for telling me about the candles I will definetly give that a try. thank you so much hugs Tobey

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    2. The crayons I mean, never thought of using them, will give it a try.

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