Nobody, absolutely no one, “this lady opted to make scented candles after watching one YouTube tutorial”.
I woke up feeling very adventurous that morning. After going through a YouTube video that seemed very easy to replicate, I went to a supplies shop close to my house to get regular candles for this experiment.
I was supposed to see this experiment to fruition in three simple steps:
- Step one: melt the candles,
- Step two: infuse the scent I want,
- Step three: leave the candle to solidify.
If only life was that easy.
To avoid the overheating of the candle wax, I opted to use the hot plate at home instead of a gas cooker. I threw in about two candles into a little pot, covered the pot and went to dig out an essential oil for the scent.
I barely took five minutes before returning to the kitchen but when I did, all I could see was darkness. Mind you, this was around 12pm and the entire kitchen was dark, covered in smoke.
The candles couldn't have melted that fast, I thought to myself. This brought me to my first lesson.
Never leave your candle wax unsupervised.
Hurriedly, I picked up a kitchen cloth to open the pot and as I did, fire surged from the pot. I was absolutely confused. How did I get here for crying out loud? I put the lid on the pot and managed to drag it out from the hot plate.
Okay, maybe I let the melted candle wax stay on beat for so long. This didn't mean I should give up.
I put in white candles and got black melted candles because the pot was burnt but who was counting?
Still hopeful, I put drops of the essential oil into the black melted candle wax and then proceeded to stir my way into another tragedy. Lesson two;
Do not pour your melted candle wax into a plastic or rubber container but if you do, ensure you can get the solidified candle out of the container later on. Else, you may end up burning down your house!
I poured the candle wax into a plastic container and had the idea to put sticks by the side for easy removal later on. This didn't work either as the “scented candle" had other plans for me.
I left it to dry and about an hour later, I returned to see it had solidified. Great. However, getting it out of that rubber container, even with the sticks I added, was impossible. For about ten minutes, I thought of all possible ways to get that candle out but nothing worked because it was stone hard. The only way to get the candle out was by cutting through the rubber container and that particular rubber container was very firm.
At this point, I accepted my fate. How could I become an expert candle maker after just one YouTube video? My only happiness was the fact that I didn't burn down the house trying to make a scented candle.
After the entire experiment, I searched for, found and purchased scented candles from a verified vendor. Now, that wasn't so hard right? Why didn't I do that in the first place? Like I said, I felt adventurous that morning and whenever I feel adventurous, I embark on adventures😌.
Images belong to me, except stated otherwise.