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The Unique Craft of Candle-Making


The festive time of the year is here and many are starting to think about gift-giving and gift-getting. Some have their traditional presents to prepare, such as soup jars or handmade ornaments, while others are more of the Christmas Eve, last-minute shopping type. However, one student at WHS has especially unique plans for her friends’ gifts this Christmas: personalized candles.


Aria Arnholt, a sophomore, has plans to share her skill with others this holiday season. Arnholt explains, “I normally make candles for someone's birthday or a certain holiday like Valentine's or Christmas.”


When asked to expand upon the steps in the candle-making process, Aria lists:

  1. Put a type of wax (paraffin, soy gel, or palm) in a double boiler (I use a bowl over a pot of hot water), and melt the wax.

  2. As the wax is melting, prepare your wick (I use store-bought ones that are ready-to-use), and stick it using a tad bit of melted wax to the bottom of your [chosen] glass container.

  3. Add food coloring and scent to the melted wax and stir.

  4. Finally, pour it into the glass container.


“I’ve always loved burning candles,” recalls Arnholt. “Whenever my family went to a store with scented candles, I would lag behind to smell all the different scents. Given how cool I thought candles were, I wanted to learn to make my own.”


A few years ago, Aria started doing research on candle-making, to see how easy it would be to learn the craft. She soon decided it was an achievable ability.


“I asked my grandparents for wax and wicks for Christmas and my birthday, and bought a couple of things by myself. My parents also got me a candle-making book, which was where I learned most of everything,” Arnholt says.


Aria describes making candles as something she does when she has a good amount of free time, explaining, “It takes about an hour to make one candle, so I can’t do it in small bits of time.”


Aria makes most candles for friends and family members for birthdays, Valentine’s Day, and Christmas. She described her favorite candle she’s made so far as “a dark blue gel wax candle in a round container. It was about the size of my palm and smelled like vanilla.”

However, Aria believes the most impressive candle she’s ever made has to be “a multi-layered one that looked like the ocean. It had pink palm wax at the bottom, to look like sand, a row of seashells, and then layers of different colors of blue wax.”


In this time when going on extensive holiday shopping sprees may not be the safest activity, choosing the handcrafted, homemade option this season is a way to make something uniquely beautiful out of the 2020 rollercoaster.


Written by: Hannah Lutz


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