Gel Candles 101

If you have been making candles for a while, chances are you know paraffin and natural wax candles well. You may even have a good amount of experience with gel candles. If you haven’t had the chance to work with gel candles you may find it worth your while to check them out. While many are rapidly becoming the best selling candles on the market due to their unique beauty and the fact that they burn at least twice as long as regular paraffin wax candles.  The transparent gel used to make gel candles has a rubbery texture which glows when the candle is lit.  There are a number of ways to embed additional stylistic elements to make your candle more personal and add ore fragrant scenes to compliment your home decor. Before getting too far ahead, however, let’s just start out with the basics: Here’s how to start making your home-made gel candles: 

·        Melt the gel

·        Add Fragrance

·        Add Color

·        Pour into pre-wicked container

·        Add embeds if desired

·        Wait until cool

·        Light and enjoy

Gel Candle Making Supplies

If you’re aiming to make a good designer candle, you’ll want to start off with good ingredients. First and foremost, you need premium ingredients for your gel candles. Fortunately, these premium ingredients are not commonly found at your local craft store. 

Choosing your Gel

When shopping around for gel, know that Penreco holds the only US patents on candle gel.  Penreco's Versagel is widely considered by professional candle makers to be the best candle gel on the market. Note, all the gels contain zero additives as they are already premixed.  

Equipment needed

Whether you’re making designer candles or just mass producing certain molds, every candle maker has an arsenal of tools they use to get the jobs done. Though many candle makers just experiment with what work—the following is a list of tools recommended for your candle making tool box:  

·        Large Glass Measuring Cup - for pouring heated gel and/or melting gel in the oven

·        Electric Presto Kitchen Kettle - for melting larger quantities of gel

·        Thermometer - a regular candy thermometer is fine

·        Stirring utensil - metal is best, don't use wooden

·        Metal skewer - use for stirring and/or moving embeds around

·        Potato peeler - for shaving off small slivers of block dye

·        Toothpicks - for adding liquid dye to gel