For the past year or so, we’ve had a couple large candles just sitting around, not being used. The wax and the wicks were so far low that we didn’t dare have them lit for long for fear of the glass breaking. This past weekend I had enough time on my hands that I was cleaning through the craft closet and came across them again. I decided enough was enough and they needed to get tossed.
But suddenly, I had an idea. I could melt the wax out, as there was still a lot there, and turn these very fragrant candles into wax melts, or tarts, whatever you want to call them. Listed below are the very few steps I took in this process.
Step 1: I used my soup pot (as the canning pot would be over kill) to melt the wax in the jars. I made sure to place a pot holder in the bottom of the pot so that the glass wouldn’t clink against the bottom and possibly break. It’s also very important to make sure that you have enough water to heat the jars in, but not enough for them to float in. That can also lead to shattered glass.
Step 2: Once the wax was melted, I took the jars out of the water very carefully and used a funnel to pour the wax into my mold of choice: a plastic egg carton.
Step 3: I gave the melts close to three hours to fully cool and set before I even bothered to try popping them out. They came out without a hitch.
Step 4: If you have no further need of the jars or the egg carton, recycle these pieces!
The yellow melts are sparkling lemon scented and the tan ones are vanilla oak.
Once everything was cool, I used a large canning jar to place the melts in. They work wonderfully! My only comment is that some oil will remain on the outside of the melts as the fragrance oils don’t seem to take very well to reconstitution. Aside from that, I think it’s a wonderful way to recycle very fragrant wax left overs.
