~How To Care For Your Candles~

Today, I thought I would share a candle's 101.  First and foremost, it is important to always allow your candle to get a full pool of wax melted, each and every time you burn it.  If you blow it out before you have a liquid pool of wax, your candle will tunnel.  Tunneling is when the wax builds up on the sides, and does not burn even.  For some reason the first couple burns seem to take the longest to get a full wax pool.  Therefore, make sure you are going to be home for a few hours the first few times you light your candle.  The photo above, shows how the wax is liquid, this is what we want to have before we blow out our candle.

After you burn your candle it will often times get a muffin top, and the wick will be a bit too long.  Now it is time to trim your wick.  If you leave the muffin top, bits of it will fall into your wax and make it not as nice looking.  If you allow your wick to be too long, you can have sooting issues.  Also, just as a side note, soy candles have less sooting issues, and are a healthier type of candle to burn in your home.  I still burn paraffin candles from time to time, but use soy for the most part. 

You can use normal scissors to trim your wick, but they can be tricky to use as your wax burns down.  The angle is just not right with normal scissors.  If you burn candles often, I highly recommend you invest in a pair of wick trimmers.  You can purchase them from candle stores, or even on Amazon.  Mine were under $10 and worth every dime.

You want to trim your wick, and attempt to get the entire wick on your wick trimmer's however, most of the time a piece of the wick will fall into your candle.

Here is what it looks like when a bit of your muffin topped wick falls into your candle.  This is why it is always a good thing to let your wax get solid again before trimming you wick.  When this happens, just take your candle to the trash can, and turn it upside down and gently blow on the piece of wick, so it falls into the trash.

Now your candle is ready for the next burn.  

I hope this little Candles 101 will help you to have success when burning your candles in your homes.  Thank you for stopping by my little space.  Hugs.  ~Juli