Dipping Your Own Beeswax Candles

Dipping your own beeswax candles can be not only fun, but highly meditative and warming. The smell of the beeswax as well as the repetitive dipping up and down, up and down, and watching the candles get bigger and bigger has never stopped mesmerizing all the children that I have done this with over the past 22 years, as well as my own children.

Here’s how:

• Obtain 100% pure beeswax
  (Amazon sells it as: Organic Candle Making Bundle Kit) OR find a local bee keeper and see if they can sell you some. That is how I always used to get my beeswax.
• Like the picture above, get an old sauce pan (thrift stores are great for this) and a 16+ oz. metal can.
• Prepare your wicks: cut about 1½ inches higher than the top of the
 can.
• Find an old glass jar or any jar about the same size as the metal can to
 fill with cold water.
• If you have a camp stove, that will work best. Or if not, use your kitchen stove with step stools around it for the children to climb up onto.

Now to put this all together:

• Turn the camp stove or stove top on to low.
• Put the sauce pan filled half full with water on the burner.
• Put the 16+ oz. can inside the sauce pan with as many chunks of beeswax as you can fit.
• If it topples to the sides and water wants to come in, put rocks inside the sauce pan to hold the can with the wax upright.
• Now, let the wax melt.

Preparing the wick:

• Take the wicks that are cut to size and dip down and up then into cold water.
• Straighten that out and do a couple more times until it is straight and solid.

Now the fun begins:

• One by one the children take turns dipping the wick down and up
 ONCE.
• Then, dip into the cold water.
• Go round and round with this until the desired size is reached.
• Singing a gentle song while doing this, or doing it at night by candle light, can bring the mood of stillness and openness to receive the grand gift of the bees and the promise of the coming of warmth and light.

Tips to aid this process:

• Only dip down and up as opposed to letting your wick stay in the hot
 wax. If the wick is left in the hot wax the candle will melt back into
 the wax and you will have no candle! 🙂
• Keep the wax warm without boiling.
• Gather greenery and, after a dipping, press them into the candle. Dip 
 again and it will be beautiful.
• Cover work surfaces with tin foil or blue painting tape. The wax gets in places you would never imagine it could! So, cover, cover, cover. Ground tarps work really well on the floor too.
• Have fun and be creative!

My children and I have made candles for years and they got very creative with how they made them. Many different shapes too!

These are some candles that one of my children made a couple years ago.