…get it? Air fresheners? But they’re steampunk? So Airship fresheners! Anyway, enough of this silliness. Look! I made candles! These little soya tealights were so easy to make. The hardest part was choosing the fragrances in the first place, and then it was all about doing the maths (ugh) to work out the correct proportions of fragrance to wax.
I’m making them in tiny little batches to start off with, while I decide which fragrances (maybe all of them!) I want to make into larger candles. This is a half-size baking tray, with the tealight cups and wicks in sustainers all set out.
You melt the wax in a bain-marie – in my case a pyrex jug in a shallow saucepan full of simmering water. The soya wax melts at a much lower temperature than other types of candle wax, so you can work with it really quickly.
Here they are, all poured out and waiting to set! I had a teensy bit of wax left over, because I didn’t fill the tealight cups all the way to the top. The wax has shrunk down a little bit as it’s set, so I know for next time that I can fill the cups right up to the brim without worrying about them overflowing.
I’m waiting for my last little bit of packaging to arrive, and then I’m going to make them up into sets of five, one of each fragrance. The first half a dozen sets will be for sale at a discounted price (don’t ask me how much, I haven’t done the sums yet!) over on the Eternal Magpie Facebook page.
Feedback will be very welcome on this first batch, and I think it’s easier to get a discussion going over on Facebook. Are the scents too strong? Too subtle? Just plain horrible? Or just right? I really like them, but once they leave my Shed I’m not the one who has to smell them any more! It’s always great to hear what people think.