Quick Valentines Day Candles

Candle-making used to be such a huge production its a wonder any of us went through the whole process to make our own candles. Things are much easier nowadays! Put away the pots and pans, forget boiling water and melting wax - make your candles with no mess and no hassle! Create beautiful heart candles for Valentines Day and they can serve as centerpieces, d?cor and even as gifts! Since it only takes a few minutes to make heart candles, and about half a minute to clean up afterward, youll want to create many! Beeswax makes it so easy to create a heart candle or another shape. Youll find the thin sheets of beeswax at most any craft store and its available in many colors. Choose red and pink sheets to make a striped heart or all red to make a different design. White is another color that will look nice as a heart itself or as a layer of color in a striped candle.

Use cookie cutters, if you have them, to cut heart shapes from the beeswax. The wax is soft so it takes only a second to push the cutter into the wax. Make all the hearts the same size even if you make them assorted colors. If you have no cookie cutters you can use a stencil or even a heart shape cut from a piece of paper. Draw around the shape to make a heart on the beeswax then cut it out.

After you have a stack of hearts use an ice pick or similar item to poke a hole in the center of each one. Its important that the holes in the hearts will align perfectly with each other when the shapes are stacked. One way to ensure this is to poke a hole in the first heart, lay it on top of the next one, then run the ice pick through the hole of the first heart and into the second one. Each time, stack one more heart on the bottom, then push the pick through the holes of the rest of the stack, and into the new heart. Stand a weighted wick on the table and slide the hearts onto it to finish the candle. Allow a half-inch or so of the wick to rise above the last wax heart. Make any number of designs by the colors you stack and how many of each color you stack together. Make a heart thats starts out red, fades to pink, then to white. Or, make a heart candle thats all red but has a single layer of pink on top. There are any number of colors and designs you can create. Use the same method for creating candles for other occasions besides Valentines Day. Make Christmas tree candles, jack-o-lantern candles and even everyday candles. The beeswax makes it so very easy!