Introduction to Making Scented Candles
Most hobby shops will have scents available for making scented candles. However, if you feel up to it, I would suggest purchasing your scents from an online retailer. It"s generally the same quality, there"s a wider variety and if you know where to look, you can actually get it cheaper. (Yes even with shipping included!)Scents come in all different sorts of compositions, however, if you are buying the scent specifically for making scented candles, oil based is the only way to go. You see, most candles contain mineral oil so if you used a water or alcohol based fragrance, the oil in the wax and the water or alcohol of the scent wouldn"t mix well together and there would be pooling ÷ and ruined candles and we don"t want that. So oil based scents it is!
Now technique wise, there"s not too much of a difference between making scented candles and unscented candles. Mostly it comes down to a few extra steps, the first of which being to measure out your scent in accordance to the wax you chose. Each wax has a different fragrance threshold, so you should examine this during the process of choosing your actual project. For instance, you wouldn"t want to have a 7% fragrance threshold in a low density gel wax. This would not only make the fragrance too strong in the candle, but it would also compromise the integrity of the candle causing it to burn poorly and become a fire hazard.
The other additional step to making scented candles is to add the scent after you remove your melted wax from the double boiler or multi-cooker respectively and before you add any color or pour it into the mold.
While in the beginning stages of making scented candles, you will want to start small and experiment. As you are successful, take note of the fragrance to wax ratios, which wicks you used and their widths, etc. and move on to bigger projects. By the time you start giving them away as gifts you"ll have your own little recipe book full of deliciously scented candles that you know will make the recipients of the candles very happy.