Tuesday, September 26, 2023

New "Old" Candles- Refill/Recycle Old Candle Wax

 I love a good candle and lately I've been buying a lot of candles. Well, not too recently since I'm technically not trying to purchase more until I finish at least two. Maybe three once I have my next DIY candle done.

This is just something fun I do to recycle old wax. You know how you burn a candle down but sometimes there is at least an inch of wax left?  I hate throwing it out. Back in the day I used to cut the rest out and put it in a wax warmer and once the scent was gone I would throw it out. I don't have a wax warmer anymore so I haven't done that in years. These days I save the wax and make a "new" candle. It works surprisingly well.

Anytime I use up a candle and there is leftover wax I scrape out the leftover wax. Or freeze the candle and pop it out if it's a harder wax. I just store it in old tea tins or candle tins until I have enough to make a candle.





You can see it looks a mess and has discoloration but usually once you melt it down it goes away. Like magic. I already melted the larger jar down. I need to do the mini jars.  So when I'm ready to candle, I just set the tins in a large pot of water that's close to boiling but not. I wait for it to melt. While that's happening I take the kit I bought off Amazon and place a wick in my empty jar. I believe I paid under $10 for mine. 




I use cute candle jars that I've already emptied. I tend to keep quite a bit of the packaging/glasses from cute candles now. I recently refilled a Dyptique jar. And I'm waiting to empty this other candle from Merchant of Beauty- the jar is beautiful and handmade in France. It was a Christmas gift from my sister. Unfortunately the brand is no longer open- but I will keep and refill the jar forever once it's empty. I also have this old smiley face jar I will probably refill tomorrow or over the weekend since it's smaller.



So I get my empty jar that has the wick in it and pour the wax in once it has melted. It can get messy so use paper towel or newspaper to make clean up easy. Then I just center the wick and clip it into place and let the wax harden. And you have a perfect candle! 


This is my most recent refill. It's perfect. It doesn't smoke, it burns to the edges, the wax is perfect. And it's just a hodge hodge of scents, usually it's not too strong and you can make interesting scents depending on the leftover wax you have. Or sometimes you have a candle with barely any scent. It's all OK with me because I'm just looking for a fun way to recycle old wax and keeping it out the trash. 

Would you try this? What do you do with old, leftover wax? 

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