Paper Snowflake Week: Candles

Today I decided to put paper snowflakes on my candles. This process was slightly less successful than I had anticipated, but that had more to do with inferior materials than a problem with the process in my opinion.

I didn't have a candle to try this idea on, so I went to the trusty dollar store. I can walk to the dollar store. Unfortunately, the only candles they have are either this really ugly green color and kind of short or in containers. I really didn't feel like going home, getting in the car, and driving to another store to try and find my candles, so I just got one of the candles in a jar.


I extracted the candle from the jar by placing it in a pot of water and boiling it. As the wax melted, I was able to stick a knife down the side and get the candle out of the jar. This worked tolerably well.

Unfortunately, there is a reason these candles are in jars, namely they are made of really soft wax. The candle never hardened very well and was an all around pain to work with. Still, I think you can get the general idea from  my photos. I am confident that, given a stiffer candle, this method would result in much cleaner looking product.

As for the actual method, it was rather simple. First I made a snowflake (if you missed Monday's post about my tips for making snowflakes, here is a link). Then, I dipped the snowflake in wax, much like I did for yesterday's ornaments, but instead of letting it dry, I immediately applied it to the side of the candle. The original plan was to use a hairdryer to clean up any kinks or edges that had not gone down right by blowing the air to melt the candle just slightly. I didn't even attempt this with the soft candle that was practically melting at room temperature, but I am still fairly confident in the theory.

If we want to look at this from a scientific approach, I failed to prove or disprove my hypothesis because of poor quality materials in execution of the experiment. Still from what I was able to observe, the method is sound.

I talked about another way to use paper snowflakes for tea candle holders back during baby food jar week. The snowflakes were much harder than the autumn leaves (you have to be gentle not to tear them), but give off very pleasing shadows.