Gel Candle Designs: Illuminated Embed Candles

The candle appears just like an ordinary, plain candle during the day.

If kept under light…as the night starts to near, you can slowly see the image of the dolphin appear from the phosphorescent pigment contained in the glass.

We began this gel candle with a few chunks of Glow Base, dropped in the bottom around the wick, so that we would have highlighting in the entire base of the candle.

Next we added more clear chunks of gel (for depth) and then did our over pour of clear gel scented with Ocean fragrance.

Then, using our embedding tool, we positioned the (I.E.) dolphin in the corner of the candle.

Since the dolphin is made with clear glass treated with phosphorescent pigment, he is almost virtually invisible during the day, which is the look we want.

So that our ‘day-time’ candle would not be too boring, we allowed the candle to set, and then placed a glass palm tree in the top surface of the candle in the corner. (If you have trouble getting the tree to adhere, pour a thin layer of molten gel to hold the tree in place.)

Leave the candle in a light source during the day and, as nighttime approaches, the image of the dolphin will magically appear. Customers LOVE this idea.

DayTime Illuminated Gel Candles

Nighttime Illuminated Gel Candles

Another design is to embed a regular blue glass Dolphin also….then as night approaches, you see he has found a magic friend and playmate.

And the best news is that when the candle is finished, the customers have a splendid glow-in-the-dark dolphin as a keepsake.

Article & Design by Patti Smith, Design Artist
BioMax Candle Supply ~ www.biomax1.com

Gel Candle Design: Hatching Turtle Gel Candles

The one thing that my wife Ruth and I figured out is, when it comes to gel candles, the sky is the limit with your creativity.

There are so many candles that can be made with the help of your imagination or some idea nature shares with us.

Sea Turtle Gel Candle Seascape Embeds

What we did here was create a simple candle that brings out the “Awhhh! How cute!” from almost everyone that has seen it.Nature played a big hand with this candle with some imagination tucked in there. Simple!

I wanted the candle to have a natural setting. while giving the appearance of an actual hatching and not going overboard on the scene.

To do this you’ll need the following items:

• 4oz Ivy Bowl
• White Aquarium sand (use a good quality sand as cheaper brands tend to bleed)
• Natural color or play sand
• Ceramic Turtle hatchling
• 1pound of Penreco MP Gel
• Gel Wick
• Pebbles
• Very small seashells
• Your favorite gel candle safe scent.

Step1
We start by placing the wick in the Ivy bowl. We use wick stickums to keep the wick in place. For those of you who do not know what they are, these are a double-sided tape cut in a circle to match your wick tab.

Step2
Using a clean bowl or glass. I mix equal amounts of white and play sand together. The objective here is to create tropical color sand. You can use your own judgment on how light or dark you want to make your mix. When you are satisfied with your sand mix, pour some into the Ivy bowl.

Tilt the bowl on and angle to make like a sand dune on the beach. Set the jar on your workbench. I then added the turtle on the left side of the bowl, placing it midway in the sand dune. Using a spoon, I took more of the sand mixture and gently placed it around the eggshell while building areas up behind and under the turtle. You can design this anyway you like.

Now you can add some pebbles behind the turtle and scatter some small seashells for a shoreline affect. You can also add some sea grass, use a little green sand in small areas behind the turtle or find something like small rustic tin vines from a craft shop to give a dead seaweed appearance. Take your time and blend your scene together. If you don’t like how your candle appears, start over!

Remember. The whole idea is to create something that looks natural.

Step 3
Use gel candle safe scent. You can use coconut, mango or some other tropical type scent to tie in this candle scene. We use our own custom blend called Island Dreams in this design.

Step 4
Now that you decided what scent to use, it’s time to heat up your Gel. While the Gel heats up, you can use a heat gun at the middle or the low setting to pre-warm the glass and embed to help reduce the amount of air bubbles.

When your Gel is heated and scent has been added and mixed well, slowly pour your hot Gel over the sand until it’s covered.

Let this cool. This step helps keep the sand locked in place and reduces air purging from the sand. I sometimes wait for an hour before I pour the remaining Gel. It also depends on how many candles I’ve got to do. I’ve also gone as far as to finish the pour the next day.

Final Step
When it’s time to heat the Gel back up, we like to heat it up slowly so we don’t burn off too much scent. Gently warm the glass and the top of the gel from the first pour with a heat gun at the low setting. When your Gel reaches pouring temperature, fill your candle to your desired height.

Ceramic Turtle Gel Candle Embeds

Conclusion
This candle will bring a smile to you and your customers. Just looking at the candle. you can almost visualize this little turtle scampering to the warm waters of the ocean, to start a life long journey of exploration of it’s new world.

Ron Giordani of Mystic Candles

Note: Ceramic Turtle hatchling available at www.rusticesentuals.com or www.silkytyme.com

Gel Candle Designs: Designing Candles with Gel Cubes

Folks don’t think about gel cubes in their gel candles. Folks don’t realize the power they hold.

Gel Cubes in Gel Candles

Gel cubes are wonderful, squishy goodies that make life easier! Gel cubes are simple to make. I always leave mine unscented (we’ll get to that in a minute).

First, pre-warm your oven on Low, then turn off. For the gel, all you need to do is ladle directly from your Presto Pot into a cookie sheet (with sides, of course!). I use MP Penreco gel in an clean, nonstick cookie sheet. Just keep adding liquid gel until the cookie sheet is full. Then carefully place in your oven for de-bubbling. Remove when gel has cooled. You can make your chunks with colored or uncolored gel.

I use a sharp knife to cut the cubes – you get a cleaner cut by not using scissors. Simply peel the sheet of gel out of the cookie sheet and cut with a knife into long strips. Then start cutting into cubes. The smaller the cubes, the easier they are to work with when creating your candle. I cut mine about 1/4″ diameter square. But be sure to cut some larger ones too. A few varying sizes will come in handy.

I spend several afternoons merely building up my cube “inventory”. You can peel out the sheets of gel and lay upon a sheet of freezer paper (yep, they stack!). While you watch TV at night, just bring out your gel sheets and start cutting cubes… you’ll be surprised at how much you can get done! Store the gel cubes in zipper seal bags. Be sure to keep all colors separate. This way, once you’re ready to start gellin’, all you have to do is pull out a bag of precut cubes. Easy, peasy!

I’ve found that when burning a gel candle using unscented cubes, the scent throw is not compromised. By having your inventory of unscented cubes, you can immediately begin crafting and not have to worry about scent. The scent is in the over-pour

What can you make with gel cubes? Just about every gel you create can be made easier by using gel cubes. There’s only one important thing to remember: when over-pouring, pour HOT.

When making a seascape, position the embeds *exactly* where you want them by keeping in place with gel cubes. Simply wick the container, add a bed of sand, and a few gel cubes. Then start placing your sea creatures. Surround all the embeds with clear gel cubes. You can continue building the seascape all the way to the top simply by “suspending” your embeds in between the gel cubes. Then, over-pour with hot, scented gel.

You can also add some larger gel cubes before pouring the sand into your container – they provide bumps in the sand to give an uneven, more realistic ocean floor. This technique can be used with any gel creation containing embeds – not just seascapes.

If the above technique doesn’t suit your fancy, there’s another way to “suspend” embeds with gel cubes. Sacrifice a Pyrex lasagna dish to your gellin’ addiction <grin>. Fill the pan halfway with clear, unscented gel and let cool for 8-11 minutes. Then take your embeds and squish into the gel about halfway. Let cool. Once cool, over-pour with hot gel to the top of the pan. Again, let cool.

Now, what do you have? If you take a knife and cut a wide area around your embed, it’s suspended inside of a gel cube! This is a very, very easy way to “suspend” an embed. If you like to use a wire to hold your embed in place but the embed doesn’t have a little hook, then just run the wire through the gel cube that holds the embed inside.

You can also make Mosaic gels, or chunk gel candles by using multiple colors. Simply put some complimentary colors together in a bowl and toss like a salad. Always be sure to use CLEAR gel cubes with the colored mixture – it helps to separate the colors once inside the candle. Pour the mixed cubes into your wicked container and overpour with hot, scented gel. Voila…a Mosaic gel! Again, easy to make.

When tossing & mixing your gel cubes, don’t forget GLITTER! Glitter is another powerful tool when working with gel. Sprinkle a few pinches into your mixture and look at the extra shimmer & twinkle your candle will have! Be sure to always have on hand the good, basic glitter colors of silver, gold, and diamond dust. These can be used with just about any color of gel.

Gel cubes can be layered for a rainbow candle. To prevent colors from bleeding onto one another during the over-pour just work with one layer at a time. Put in the gel cubes and overpour to the top, then add more cubes, then overpour. Ever wonder how to make those “Jello” creations? Gel cubes! Just toss some cubes into a wicked dish and gently over-pour.

Gel cubes work well with wax embeds. Not only will they hold your embed in place, they also help to cushion the wax against the hot gel, which prevents bleeding or melting. Use gel cubes when making fruit preserve candles. Add wax fruits around the perimeter of the container while filling the center with gel cubes. This will make your wax embed supply last longer! Use clear or colored cubes to position fruit slices in your pie candles, then over-pour with scented gel. There are many, many uses for gel cubes. I’ve only touched the surface, but I hope it sparks your imagination and creativity to come up with ideas of how to make gellin’ easier!

by Amy Pascoe of RusticEscentuals.com

Gel Candle Designs: Humorous Sea Candles

Humorous Seascape Gel Candle Design

Here is a fun candle that can bring a smile to anybody’s face. We refer this to be a crazy gel candle.

It’s not a candle that replicates a nature scene, but a candle that is created out of the clear blue.

Just one day an idea pops into your head and voila! A crazy type candle appears. And it sells! Can’t argue with that!

This fun candle was just that, out of the blue.

When I first showed it to my wife she said,” How in the heck did you come up with that idea? I said,” I dun no, it just happened.” And that’s my story and I’m sticking to it! It just happened, really it did!

You see, when we buy embeds, we don’t always know what were going to do with them.

Sea Embeds

We place them in inventory.. and when the light goes on, it’s things like this that can happen. And this is what you’ll need to do this candle:

• 4 oz ivy bowl
• Blended white sand (ref. our turtle article in the may issue)
• Glass crab (RusticEscentuals.com)
• Fish on a wire
• Aluminum Soda can assortment (craft store – usually with the doll house area)
• Tiny seashells
• Coral pieces
• Gelwick
• Wick stickum
• 1 Pd Penreco MP Gel
• Scent

Step 1

First thing you want to do is glue the soda can to the crab. I use an adhesive called E6000. It works great on broken glass embeds as well as this project. I glued the can to the top of the left claw. Let this cure for at least 24 hours.

Step 2

You can prepare the rest of the candle while your crab gets a rest. Attach your wick just slightly off center towards what we call the background of the scene with a wick stickum. Add your sand mixture to the bowl.

Step 3

Now we need to get our fish ready. We need to bend the wire a little so the fish will be looking at the soda offering. I use 2 pair of needle nose pliers for bending. The wire appears to be like piano wire and is rigged. Using two pliers to form the bend takes pressure of the glass base. Through error, I have broken the base of these fish many times by trying to bend the wire without the help of an extra tool. If the base does crack for some reason, you can glue it back together using the E6000 adhesive.

Step 4

Set your coral and what ever else you would like to add to the scene. Don’t forget that this stuff will be in the background of the scene. Add your fish placing it close to the front of the glass. Add more sand if the scene needs it. When the crab has dried, you can add it to the candle. Now, this is important to remember, this needs to be placed also to the front of the candle in an angle. Why is this important you asked? Well, lets take a closer look at the soda can. It is made of aluminum, but the printing is on a thin aluminum label. We want this well away from the extreme heat of the candle. It’s a matter of safety. There is no effect to the can label when placed properly in the candle. I placed a flame from a lighter under the can and nothing happened to it. The label didn’t melt or burn. But, when doing projects like this, you need to be concerned with the safety issues. Don’t ever assume it should be ok. Just make sure when you purchase these, that they are the aluminum style cans. I don’t have the name brand for these, but by the time you read this, I will have purchased more for inventory. Email us and we will be glad to give you the name of the manufacture. What also helps with our project is the wick we use. We use the brand called gelwick. They were designed to be used with Penreco Gels and have a petite flame. It’s a perfect wick for your gel candles.

Step 5

Now that your candle is ready, it’s time to melt your gel. For us it’s the same old story. It doesn’t matter how many or how little candles we make at a shot, we melt our gel by the pound. This way the scent can be weighed correctly eliminating any other possible hazards. When your gel is ready, pour your scent in and stir. This is another area some people just don’t get. And I read and hear about this issue all the time. You need to really stir your scent in to get a proper mix. It doesn’t matter that your adding more air bubbles. The bubbles can be worked out. A little oven work or a heat gun remedies this minor problem. Like our Turtle hatchling project, we used our scent blend called Island Dreams and for the others we used mango, coconut and another one of our blends called Mystic. We found mild scents sell good with candles like these.

Conclusion

Well, we hope you enjoyed our crazy candle project and that it brings you either some personal enjoyment or sells great for you like it has for us. Don’t forget, if you screw up, it’s easy to do again. One thing for sure is, projects like these can take the edge of a hectic day. Call it therapy if you like, I like to call it just plain getting crazy. At least my wife says so. I’m guessing I need help. Oh well! Enjoy!

By Ron Giordan of Mystic Candles