I saw a youtube diy video about how to make a cupcake candle. I am attempting to make candles for Christmas presents this year and have been watching a lot of tutorials lol This tutorial is for a birthday type candle and I thought it’d be perfect to make and give to a friend of mine whose birthday was last week. The tutorial made it seem really easy but it didn’t quite work out the same for me as it did for the girl in the video…
Here is the video, see how easy it seems?
Lemme explain to you how my experience differed from the video…
(1) She says to use craft glue, or a glue gun to attach the wick to the bottom of the jar, I don’t own a glue gun so I went out and bought craft glue, sorta. See, every bottle of craft glue explicitly said “flammable” and “do not use near fire” so um, hmm, how exactly am I supposed to use any of these types of glues in a candle? I ended up buying Crazy Glue but no matter how hard I tried the glue wouldn’t bond the bottom of the wick to the jar, all it did was get on my finger and make my finger feel all weird for a couple of days – that’s how long it took me to get it off lol 😛
(2) She uses Glucose Syrup to coat the inside of the jar so the sprinkles will stick. She says Corn Syrup is the same thing and since I couldn’t find Glucose Syrup anywhere I bought Corn Syrup. I don’t think it works quite the same lol. She uses an unknown ratio of water to syrup to coat the inside of the jar, I attempted to get the corn syrup to the same consistency but am not really sure if I did. After I mixed some syrup and water together I pulled out my brand new silicone brush (like what she used) to brush the inside of the jar, only, I used a smaller jar and the head of the brush wouldn’t fit in the jar, oops! Instead, I spooned some of the mixture in then rotated the jar around until I could see that the sides were coated.
(3) She pours sprinkles into the jar and they effortlessly and evenly coat the inside of the jar. I poured sprinkles inside the jar and they haphazardly stuck in clumps. Whats up with that? I did the only logical thing and poured more sprinkles in to the jar, which of course meant they stuck in bigger clumps lol So I used a spoon and tried spreading them around a bit and smooshing them in to the syrup to get them to stay put. It kind of worked…
(4) She melted her soy wax until she thought it was the correct consistency. The package of paraffin wax I had specifically said what temperature to melt the wax to so I opted to follow the package’s directions. The package also said what temperature the wax should be when adding the scent and dye. I wasn’t adding dye, I wanted the wax white to better show off the sprinkles. As for the scent, she used scented wax cubes but I was using an essential oil. But hey, scent is scent, right? I couldn’t find any birthday cake scents so I used the only one I owned, Sweet Pea, which yes, I know, makes no sense in a birthday cupcake candle but it’s what I had and scents are expensive and I couldn’t afford to buy another one…sigh…
(5) Something else that was different, but this my fault, she keeps her water at a much lower temperature than I did, my water ended up coming to a boil which lemme tell ya, created quite a mess! I did however copy her technique and put my large pyrex glass measuring cup in a pot, hooked on to the edge like she did, which was brilliant and something I wouldn’t have thought of on my own. I don’t own a double boiler but this trick worked great. 🙂
(6) Because the wick wouldn’t attach to the jar with the glue I took a trick I saw in a different video where you pour a small amount of melted wax in the jar, then hold the wick in place until the wax hardens, boom! Wick is in place! Once the small amount of wax hardened I used the trick I’ve seen in pretty much every candle tutorial and wrapped the loose end of the wick around a chopstick and rested the chopstick on top of the jar, this holds the wick straight so when you pour the rest of the wax in the wick doesn’t get all crooked.
(7) At this point she (and I) poured the wax in to the jar, trying hard to pour in to the middle of the jar so as not to dislodge the sprinkles. She poured all her wax in at once, let it harden, and had a perfect candle. I opted to play the safe route and save a bit of the wax as recommended in other tutorials in case there was a dent. Apparently when a candle hardens sometimes a little dent appears on the top so you save a bit of wax to fill in the dent. My candle was perfect, no dent, but I didn’t know what to do with the extra wax so I re-melted it and poured it in to the jar, kind of topping it up so to speak. Well go figure, when that last little bit hardened it had a dent! I of course had no more wax to fill in the dent sooooo the candle ended up with a dent, oops!
After my candle hardened, which I was sooooo impatient for it to do lol I took a close look at it and realized one thing…I am not good at making candles! lol 😛 Not only was there a dent in the top, but the sprinkles were still uneven and you could see a glisteney type substance (the syrup) if you looked hard at the side of the jar, I guess this means I used too much syrup? I’m not really sure…
Try not to laugh too hard when you look at how it turned out…
Look at that dent!
You can see the glisten of the corn syrup, you aren’t supposed to see that…
Here you can see how the sprinkles are in no way evenly placed along the side of the jar, and some melted while others didn’t!
So that was my first attempt at making a candle. I felt really bad giving it to my friend for her birthday considering how it turned out but I was so sure I’d be awesome at this I didn’t have a back-up plan lol. Luckily, my friend is awesome and seemed happy with the candle. 🙂 …course, she could have just been saying that…nah, I’m gonna pretend she liked it, makes me feel better about the whole thing lol
Something I learned from the experience? Use kitchen tools that you don’t normally use for cooking! Why? Because I still have wax on the tools I used when making that candle and I made it this past Wednesday! Wax on the inside of my soup pot, wax on the knife, corn syrup on the silicone brush, wax on the cutting board and in the pyrex measuring cup…no matter what I do there always seems to be a bit more wax that I missed *rolls eyes* Eventually I’ll get it all off (hopefully!) and next time I make a candle I’ll use knives etc I buy from the dollar store lol 😛
*The Youtube name for the person who made the video I used as my inspiration is Carstina DIY Beauty*
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 
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