I have a few birthday's coming up and always like to get super special presents for my friends. I went to a vintage fair in Leeds last year and saw these gorgeous vintage tea cup candles and ever since I've wanted to have a go at making them!
They didn't look that hard to make and I thought they would be such cute birthday presents so off I went to some charity shops to try and pick up some lovely vintage tea sets.
Here's my finished product!! What do you think?
Below is a little tutorial of my tea cup candles.
I ordered some 1kg wax flakes, wax dye, wicks, and glue spots off ebay for about five pounds. 1kg of wax is enough to make about ten tea cup candles.
So I got a pan with boiling water and put an old glass jug inside the pan. To caluculate how much wax you need, wiegh the tea cup and then filling with water and weighing again. The difference between the weights is the approximate ammount of wax you need. If you are adding fragrance, add just before pouring the wax into your tea cups.
Pour the correct ammount of wax flakes you need into the glass jug. Also put in the wax dye if you are wanting to make coloured wax. I added a bubblegum pink dye into mine. This should take about ten to fiveteen minutes to melt but never leave it unattended as it can be very flamable at a certain temperature. Keep the boiling water on a low heat, it is pretty easy to melt wax.
While the wax is melting cut your wick to length allowing enough wick to protrude from the top of the tea cup. Push the wix through the sustainer (Round silver disc) and press a glue dot and stick to the bottom of the teacup. I also used a bit of all purpose glue to stick it down as it worked better than just the glue dot.
Keep stirring the wax using an old utensil or in my case I used wooden skewers that I could just throw away afterwards. Using the skewers i placed these across the top of the tea cups to keep the wick central and in place for when pouring the wax in.
Once all the wax flakes are completely melted carefully take the jug out of the pan and slowly pour the melted wax into your tea cup. Leave these to set. I thought they would take ages but mine took about half an hour to an hour!
Decoration! Now you can leave your candles as they are or you can add almost anything to them. I decided to add some sequins and glitter! Even if the wax is completed set, don't worry just get your hair dryer out and hair dryer the top of the candle until the wax is melted a bit. Then add glitter and sequins. It is better to add sequins as this stage as they won't sink to the bottom.
And the finished products! What do you think?!
All photographs my own.
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