But It Smells...

...so good! Have you ever bought or received as a gift a candle that smelled really good? Then you burn it and it doesn't burn down evenly. Next thing you know, you have a bunch of wax with no wick? I hate to throw those great smelling candles away when this happens. Or, what about those so-so smelling candles? What do I do?

I make new candles and firestarters!

For the candles that come in glass containers, I melt the wax by either putting it in the microwave for 2 minutes (Do not "cook" for more than 2 minute intervals AND do not leave unattended), or I place the glass container in a pan with water and let the "double boiler" effect do the job.

If the candles are the larger ones that don't come in containers, like pillars, I break them up into smaller chunks. The orange one above was a 3-wick 8" diameter pumpkin pie spice candle. It smelled sooo good! The red one was a cinnamon apple scent.


Once the wax is melted, I use a small pair of needle-nose pliers to lift the glass container out of the hot water and pour it over dryer-lint filled paper egg cartons (Recycling at it's best!), if the wax scent isn't all that great. These make great firestarters for the fireplace, or camping.
Or, I will continue to add wax to the glass container and let it melt until the container is full of melted wax. Then, I will add a wick and let it solidify. Voila! A new Pumpkin Pie Spice candle.

After melting the wax, how do I clean the glass containers if I'm not using them to make candles? I use paper towels to wipe out the residual wax. Good as new!

A few things to note: 1) Make sure the water in the pan doesn't evaporate, otherwise the glass may shatter and you'll have a mess on your hands if there was a lot of melted wax. 2) The glass container gets REALLY hot, so be careful when lifting out with the needle-nose pliers. 3) You can "mix and match" colors/scents, but I've found that the resulting color usually ends up being a "dirty" mixture of whatever was mixed together.