If you're wondering how to make food candles, you're not alone. Fortunately, these candles only look complicated. Once you've mastered the basic techniques for melting and pouring wax, you can easily learn to create your own fake food candles.
The Appeal of Food Candles
Candles that look like food are very popular. There are several different reasons you may want to learn how to make these unique candles. For example:
- If you enjoy decorating with candles, fake food candles add an unexpected twist to your home décor. They are especially appropriate decorations for parties and holiday celebrations.
- Fake food candles make great gifts for the hard to buy for people on your holiday shopping list. For example, your Grandma who is famous for her apple pie is sure to appreciate a unique apple pie candle.
- The smaller food candles, such as chocolate chip or muffin candles, make excellent party favors. In fact, there are many people who use mini cupcake candles as favors for their weddings or baby showers.
- Food candles are a great addition to any home-based candle making business. Since they have a distinctive look, people are much more likely to seek out these items as opposed to plain votive, pillar, or jar candles.
Learn How to Make Food Candles
When searching for ideas for making food candles, you can find a number of tutorials online. For example:
Getting the Fragrance Right
Obviously, fragrance is an important element of making food candles. If your chocolate cake candle smells like roses, the illusion isn't going to be too effective!Thanks to creation of synthetic fragrance oils, candle makers can buy almost any scent imaginable. If you can't find what you're looking for, however, you can also try mixing a few different oils to make your own custom scent. For example, cinnamon and vanilla oils combined make a great "French toast" blend.
Sometimes it can be hard to determine how much fragrance is sufficient for a candle making project. If you don't add enough, your candle doesn't have a strong enough scent. If you add too much, however, the oil will pool together and your candle won't burn properly.
When making food candles, it's a good idea to test your fragrance on a batch of small votive candles. Take careful note of how much fragrance oil you add to the wax, especially if you're combining multiple scents in the same candle. This will keep you from investing too much time in a project that yields unsatisfactory results.
Candle Making Molds
While many of the basic projects for how to make food candles can be completed using normal candle making supplies, some of the more elaborate designs do require specialty molds. If you're having trouble finding fake food molds locally, check out the selection on the following Web sites:
If you have a choice between metal or silicone molds, most candle makers seem to prefer working with the silicone molds. Even if you don't use a mold release, it seems to be easier to remove your candle from the silicone mold.
A Word of Warning
Although learning how to make food candles is a great pastime for crafters, it's important to make sure children understand these candles are not intended to be eaten. A candle that looks and smells like a yummy treat can be very tempting for a small child. If you have doubts about whether or not your children will leave your food candles alone, keep them on a shelf that's safely out of reach.
