We have some of those giant citronella candles to use in the back yard. They work very well to reduce the mosquitos, but they produce a lot of scraps. So, of course, I wanted to use them up. I’ve talked about using leftover fabric and food, but here’s another type of leftover.

After a couple of evenings, we had all these chunks of wax left from the candles.

I set up a few chunks of paper towel tubes on a paper plate covered with a sheet of waxed paper. I taped them down in a few places, but didn’t worry about a tight seal. My hot pot and a glass jar served to melt the wax. I have these around for when I am doing batik fabric dyeing.

The tubes and the first chunks of wax in the jar.

Once I had some wax melted, I just kept adding pieces until the jar was half full. I stirred it with a skewer. I wasn’t worried about bits of leaves or grass, as I knew that it would settle to the bottom and even if some ended up in the candles, it wouldn’t affect how they burned.

Preparing the wicks

I use some old candle wicking thread I had from a pillow kit I made ages ago. I braided it in to a long string. Once the wax had melted, I dipped the wick into the wax and let it cool. Again using a skewer, I tied a small section of wick to the skewer and suspended it in the tubes.

The pour

The first pour of wax was just a little bit to help seal the bottom edges of the tubes. I poured a small amount and held the tube down until the wax began to set. Some spilled out onto the plate, but that was expected. I then made sure the wicks were pretty centered in the holders.

I melted more wax and filled the molds. The next step it to let them cool completely

The ones on the right were poured first and have started to set while I was heating the wax for the ones on the left.

Once the candles are cool and set, it is time to peel the tube off.

The final result is 4 multi colored candles. I was just randomly adding the wax, but the first melt had more of the orange wax and the second had more of the green wax.

I ended up with four candles using about 2/3 of the wax I had.

If you like, you can warm them slightly to make the surface smoother. Since I wasn’t making these for a neat appearance, I just left them as they came out of the molds.