How to make birthday candles from beeswax.

I am going to show you how to make birthday candles using natural beeswax. These super simple birthday candles from beeswax are so pretty. We all found that making them really added to the fun of planning a birthday celebration without making the day too busy or being overwhelming. I was able to find bees wax locally at a bee supply shop. And when our beehive is up and running we will have our own beeswax to use in all kinds of projects.

About candles and beeswax

I wanted to try making natural birthday candles when I looked at what I could buy for children’s birthday cakes. Choosing which birthday cake to make and the design on of the cake are a big part of birthdays around our house. The decision making process goes on for weeks.

Homemade calm

I saw all the birthday candles available to buy come in plastic packaging and seem to be made from paraffin wax. This is not exactly what I had in mind when I thought of my child leaning over their birthday cake to blow out the candles. These pretty yellow candles turned out so well I will make these candles for the grown ups in my life too.

The bee shop gave me some wicks and for a first try I decided to go with the ready made wicks. I plan to make my own using butcher’s twine and beeswax so that the wicks will be simply made as well. Also, the wicks can be made anytime I need them without a trip to the shop.

The ready made wicks come with a metal disk at the base. I didn’t need the full length for birthday candles and I was able to use the left over length and bases to make little tealights. I am going to send these tealights to my sisters just for a fun surprise in the letterbox.

Beeswax is sticky and the bee shop warned me that any pan I used would forever be beeswax only. A glass jar seemed like a good plan as I could use it to store the wax for later on. I wanted candles about 10 – 12 cm high and not too wide. I used a clean jar to melt the wax, the wax can be deep enough without needing a lot of wax.

I put the jar into a small pan with hot water and kept it warm on the stove top. The water does not need to boil.

This way I could dip the wicks in the jar and coat them with a layer of wax and keep the wax warm at the same time.

Beeswax gets soft at 40C and melts at 62-64C. It is not too hot to work with and it cools and hardens quickly.

The candle on the left is a little bumpy. When this happened I think the wax had cooled too much. I put the jar of wax back into the warm water the saucepan to melt it again.

Instructions:

1. Put up to 500grams of beeswax into a clean wide mouthed jar.

2. Place the jar into a small pan and fill with enough hot water to melt the wax without floating the jar.

3. Assemble the wicks and lay them out on baking parchment or a silicon baking sheet.

I have some silicon baking sheets that were intended for the barbecue but work perfectly for cookies in the oven. The beeswax did not stick to the sheet at all and it was super simple to lay the dipped wicks down to cool and then redip them.

4. When the beeswax has melted, dip the wicks one at a time and place on the parchment or sheet to cool.

5. By the time you have dipped about six wicks the first one will be cool enough to be redipped.

6. I dipped the wicks 5-7 times each until each one was about the right size for a birthday candle.

7. This was the part where we all had a turn making the candles.

It was a fun part of the preparations for everyone from ages 5 to 12 years old.

6. Let the candles harden before cuting the wicks with sharp scissors.

7. I kept the wax warm and placed the remainder of the wicks with bases into small jars.

8. I found out that is it better to trim the tealight candlewicks to the right height before pouring in the wax.

Also I poured the warm wax into the small jar in one pour. The wax hardens quickly and this way the surface was smooth and even.

Have fun making these cute little candles. It lovely to be able to have some homemade gifts at the end as well.

I will add a recipe for gluten free cupcakes. We are a gluten free household and have tried a lot of recipes using all kinds of flours. I have a few that have been adopted into our recipe book and I will post this one soon.