New Candles from Old Candles

There is a candle that Anthropologie sells that smells AMAZING. Truly my favorite candle, but they aren't cheap so I usually just appreciate them when I'm in the store - at Christmas they were doing a good sale though so I ordered one. When it arrived I could hear the candle before I even saw the candle because it was smashed to bits and the glass was making so much noise! I immediately called the company,  they felt bad and sent a new one. When it arrived I could hear the candle before I even saw the second one, it was also broken!!! I called the company again and once again they said they'd send another, but the third candle never showed up...so it's either floating around somewhere, stolen, or they just didn't bother. (I did get a refund so all good). I couldn't bear to throw the smashed candles away tho, they smell SO good - even broken I was enjoying the scent and kept them around. I got the idea to (carefully!) pick off the broken glass and salvage the wax, remelt it and make myself a new candle. I'm so happy about this I can't even tell you.

Other than the whole gingerly picking off the broken glass step, this was very easy. Cut up the candle into small pieces and put in a heatproof container (empty tin cans work well but I didn't have one big enough so I used a Ball jar), set the container into a pan that has about an inch of water in the bottom (creating a double-boiler) and melt the wax very slowly over low heat. Seriously, I probably don't need to tell you to be careful, pay attention, and don't walk away from melting wax...but I'm going to say it anyway so no one hurts themselves and blames me.

While the wax was melting I prepared the new candle holder (I got a heavy glass holder for 2 bucks at Tuesday Morning) by sticking down a wood wick to the center bottom of the holder. Keep it in place by adding a little dab of wax to the bottom of the wick, hold in place until the wax dries. Once the wax on the stovetop is melted and smooth, carefully pour it into the candle holder and let it re-harden. Then trim the wick down to about 1/4".

This was so easy and I still had more wax so I found another container (a terra-cotta pot) and made another candle, this time with a regular wick - I thought the wick was covering the hole in the bottom of the pot but once I poured in the wax I realized (see the picture for just how I realized) the wick didn't seal up the hole! So I scraped the wax off the counter and re-melted...duh. The regular wicks are soft and don't stand up on their own - you need to keep it upright and centered, so stick the bottom down the same as with the wood wick and wind the portion that is above the candleholder around a pencil. Lay the pencil across the center of the holder, pour the melted wax in, leave the pencil across the top until the wax has hardened.

I actually had a third candle arrive broken (from a different source) but it didn't
smell as good and was too hard to remove from the broken holder so I threw that one out

oops, the wick didn't seal up the hole in the bottom of the terra-cotta pot!