I’ll often browse the Sydney Community College website for potentially interesting things to try out. In February, I decided to check out a candle-making class.

The class was run by the couple from arcandles who are absolutely delightful and fun. It was a really vibey, joyful way to spend a Saturday morning.

Before we started, we learned quite a lot about the hazards and risks of candle making: Melting wax could blow up on you! Paraffin candles are the devil’s work (oops)! Do not re-use glass candle vessels for new candles – they could explode!

After being suitably terrified, we chose our dyes and scents (for me: coffee and probably coffee, or maybe it was vanilla – something foodish and cosy anyway), learned about proportions and ratios, and off we went!

The process was about as simple as you’d expect – melt wax, pour into vessel – try to avoid letting things explode on you.

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My candles waiting to set

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The class candles waiting to set

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My finished items in a giant photo – in addition to the two candles, we made wax melts and rolled a small beeswax candle

My candles went all milk-shakey after a few months (heat and humidity), which I think looks quite cool.

I should probably burn them, but just lately I’ve developed a kind of aversion for strongly scented candles, so they are just sitting around looking pastelly and pretty.

My brand new scent aversion recently extended to some candles in beautiful pottery vessels from Provider Store. I’d burned about half of them, but finally removed the all the wax so I could use the vessels as cups.

I do still love candles though – especially as a kind of ritual thing: for morning pages (!), for meditation (when I actually do it) and when I do a tarot card pull. But henceforth it’s unscented beeswax all the way!

In other candle-related happenings – one of the favourite things I welcomed into ThePalaceOfLove in 2021 was a Flint rechargable candle lighter. It looks absolutely lovely and works a treat! I totally recommend!

tiny hippy station

And because I am unable to resist this stuff, of course I bought a candle kit from the class – so there are likely some unscented soy candles in my future too!