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It won't be long until we will be hearing the rustling of the leaves and feel the chill of the night. It is said that Halloween is one of the most decorated holidays besides Christmas, so in preparation, this month we feature a Pumpkin Patch gel candles, with glass embeds, and a Candy Corn Candle, with wax embeds. Let's get started.. PUMPKIN PATCH CANDLE The highlight of this candle is a glass, orange Jack-O'-Lantern and two black bats. We poured a mix of black sand and celestial gold glitter in the base of the glassware and sealed it off with thin layer of gel, making sure our glass wick bead was above the sand level so that the flame will self-extinguish before reaching the sand. The gold glitter adds a lot of depth and makes the sand appear three-dimensional. Next we added some clear chunks of gel to help hold our glass embeds in place, speed-up our candle cooling time and also give more interest. We then sprinkled the chunks with more celestial gold glitter. Now it is time to pour the rest of the candle, and we chose Pumpkin Pie fragrance. We allowed the gel to semi cool before lowering our pumpkin and bat embeds. Give that final tug on the wick to make sure it is super straight and trim to ¼" for the initial burn. Our finishing touch was a few little white ghosts and BOO! foil shapes sprinkled on the top of the candle. Simple, easy, fast and fun!
CANDY CORN CANDLE Our second feature candle this month is a candy jar candle decorated with wax candy corn in the yellow, white and orange Halloween colors. Candy candles are fun to make and always a hit with young and old. (Keep in mind that if you are using real 'candy', you must use a two-piece glass arrangement because, for safety, real candy should never be housed in the same container as the wick.)
Hinged jars are easy to find at local dimes stores and are perfect for candy candles. In order to keep your raw costs down, we recommend that you merely line the walls of the glassware with the wax embeds and thus keeping the center cylinder pure gel for that long burn time that customers love from gel candles. This will save you money yet still give a very good visual of the candy theme. We like to color the gel a pale shade, coordinating with the embeds we are using. Then if we get some color bleed, it will not be near as apparent. Colors tend to bleed most with reds and deep blues and purples. The fragrances you choose can also have an affect on the coloring, so keep all this in mind as you test your designs. We colored our gel a light orange using just a few of our peach color crystals (no mess or spills). We scented the gel with our Candy Corn fragrance. We poured the candle about ¾ full and tossed in a few gel chunks to help cool the gel faster and start our 'set'. We know that if we insert wax embeds into hot gel, they WILL melt so we need to be patient and wait for the gel to get really thick. We test this by circular 'stirring' with the wick and also feeling the heat of the gel using our finger. This takes some experience so you must be careful when you are starting out! Place your hands around the outside of the glassware to get an idea of how warm the gel is. to guard against burns. Unlike the nasty, skin-removing burns from hot glue guns, the gel will slide right off the skin, however, you still need to be careful and children should always be supervised. The height of the gel should still allow for displacement of the wax embeds you are going to add. We place the wax candies in a jigsaw puzzle pattern filling in the sidewalls to look full and attractive. Use your own creativity as you embed your pieces, and use your embedding tool (B.E.T.) to turn the pieces the direction you want. Snip the wick at ¼" and admire your work!! There are many really cute pieces of glassware decorated for Halloween. so keep an eye out. Have a fun and safe Halloween!!! Article & Design by Patti Smith, Design Artist
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