Kate West - The Real Witches’ Kitchen - Spells, recipes, oils, lotions and potions from the Witches’ Hearth

Making your own candles is great fun, but does need a certain amount of preparation. You really do need to have separate pans to heat your wax in, otherwise you risk leaving a taint on your cooking utensils, but you can always buy second-hand ones. You will also need to get hold of the raw ingredients – wax, stearin, wax colour, wicks and mould seal – as well as the moulds in which they set. In addition you will need, at least until you are very skilled, a huge amount of old newspaper with which to cover everything in case of spillage.

Probably the easiest way to start your candle-making is to buy a kit. These are sold in art and craft shops and in the toy section of many stores. They have the advantage of supplying all the ingredients you need together with some easy-to-follow instructions. If your kit suggests you need a wax thermometer, you can ignore this advice, so long as you are prepared to watch your wax like a hawk all the time it is being heated! Even with a thermometer, you cannot afford to leave molten or heating wax unattended. Once you have a kit and have started making candles with the ingredients supplied, then you can buy additional ingredients as and when you need them and also move on to buying specialist moulds, or even making your own.

The basic ingredients are wax, stearin, wick, wax colour, moulds and mould seal:

Wax is usually sold in powder or pellet form. Of course you can also melt down the odds and ends of candles you have burned, although be careful when mixing colours and scents. Do not recycle candle ends which have been used for Magic (you should have burned them down anyway) into new candles for Magical purposes, or you may end up with very confused Magic!

Stearin, which helps the candle to burn slowly and evenly and prevents dripping, usually comes as a powder. It should be added to wax in the ratio of roughly 1 part stearin to 6 parts wax.

Wicks are sold in a variety of sizes and it is important to use the right size, otherwise your candle will either burn too quickly (wick too big) or the melting wax will flood the wick and put it out (wick too small).

Mould seal is used to make an airtight seal at the top of the mould, which will be the bottom when you add the molten wax. You can also use chewing gum or plasticine. Do not use Blu-tac, as it will melt!

To these raw ingredients you can add colour, scent and anything you want to include in the candle. Colour is sold as dye discs, or you can use wax crayons. Whilst a huge range of colours are available you can pretty much make any colour you like using red, yellow and blue, varying shades by adding more or less colour. However, black is a useful addition to this, as it is not really possible to blend black without using a huge amount of colouring agent. To perfume your candle you can use perfume oil or essential oil if you are intending a Magical purpose. Other additions can include a pinch of herbs (not too much or you risk having a bonfire when you light the candle), a gemstone or even an attractive pebble. Do not add quantities of anything that will burn when the flame reaches it. There has been a series of candles on the market with plastic flowers buried in the wax – I shudder to think what happens if they catch light!

When making candles, clear a work surface close to your cooker, as you do not want to be walking around with a lot of molten wax. Also, make sure that no small children or animals are present. Whilst the wax should not be allowed to reach a temperature where it will seriously burn, wax spills do hurt and you do not want to take any chances.

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