Making Christmas #6: Ombre-effect dipped candles.

As you can find instructions for making pillar candles all over the internet, I don't feel I have much to add regarding the basics.  I used this website here, but made some adaptations following much trial-and-error.

My additional hints and tips are:

- Instead of using a proper double boiler, putting the wax base (whether beeswax or paraffin beads) into a heatproof heavy-based jug into a large pan of boiling water works pretty darn well.
- It can be a nightmare to get the candle out of the mold!  The website I have linked (as with many others) suggest putting the candle in the fridge for 15 minutes - use the freezer!!  15-30 minutes in the freezer, then run the mold under the hold tap and the candle slides out peasy.
- Don't worry about a 'wick-rod', an old chopstick is a much more money efficient tool, and as for the 'sealer' just use a bit of blu-tac!

We trialed several different brands of wax-dyes and did not like any of them - the colours looked very artificial and plasticky.  Then I came across a Martha Stewart tutorial for Dip-Dyed candles which uses bog-standard wax crayons to colour the wax.
We dipped our candle according to her instructions but only for 5 seconds, then allowed the wax to harder.  Then we dipped the candle in the coloured wax again (another 5 seconds) but only half of the depth that we had previously dipped it.  Once cooled, we did this for a final time, but only dipping the bottom 1 cm of the candle into the coloured wax.  The building up of the coloured layers created a lovely ombre effect.