My sister loves loves loves candles. I made her one!
From the bottom of the candle box, I collected all the nasty leftover candle stubs and the half-melted, U-shaped tapers that had been put in candlesticks too near the heater. I scraped the worst of the fuzz and the dust off of them with my thumbnail. I pried off the aluminum bits they stick on the bottom to keep the wicks in place.
I found an empty tin that used to have fancy green tea in it in the cupboard that has all the empty containers and jars and such in it. It’s a nice tin, round and short and sturdy, with a smoothly-fitting lid, like a fancy perfumey candle would come in. I peeled the old labels off. I put the mostly-clean candle stumps and funky tapers in the tin and put the tin in a pan of hot water on the stovetop (like a double-boiler). I melted the stubs ‘n’ tapers. I picked out the bits of wick with long tweezers and stirred the melting wax, now gone clear, with steel chopsticks. Most of the rest of the dust and cat hair collected in a wad in the middle of the whirlpool I made with the chopsticks, and I picked that out too.
My sister likes fruity scents, so I put in some raspberry extract, and it was nasty: it was mostly propylene glycol, which apparently doesn’t mix with candle wax. It sat in sad splorts on the bottom of the tin. I gave up on it. I grabbed some fruity-smelling perfume samples (I don’t like fruity scents, but they came with some other samples I’d wanted) from the mess on top of my desk, and put in four different ones. Now it smelled like one of those evil peachy perfumes the sluttier young ladies slather on nowadays. Perfect for my sister.
My sister likes purple, so I put in some red food coloring and some blue food coloring. Same thing as the raspberry extract: the coloring mostly clumped up and fell to the bottom. I consoled myself that this ugly lumpy mess would be concealed when the wax cooled and went opaque above it. I took the pan off the heat and kept stirring with the chopsticks. The wax was vaguely pinkish-lavender. I could live with that.
I took one of the longer wicks I’d picked out, one from a U-bent taper, and poked it through one of the wick anchor-thingies I’d pried off. I sunk it in the wax and bent the top end into a hook-shape, and hung that off the long tweezers laid over the top of the tin. I let it sit there. It cooled.
Now I am making a pretty label to print off onto pretty paper to stick on the tin. I will use my sister’s name and stuff. It will be personalized. I will list the ingredients. I will list “LOVE” as an ingredient, but I will footnote it, and explain that the LOVE is actually cat hair. My sister is a crazy cat lady, so she will chuckle.
I didn’t spend anything! I didn’t buy anything! I didn’t even use anything I had any other use for! I get sixty Enviro-Greenie points!!1! Yay me!
How are *you *earning your recycling cred this holiday season?
That made me laugh. I am surprised you had a long enough wick though. Good luck, that.