Melt Your Old Candles into New Candles

When I started stashing away my nearly empty candle jars, I had good intentions of repurposing the jars for storage or decor purposes.  Before I realized it, I had so many candle jars. There’s always those few millimeters of unusable wax at the bottom that I wanted combine together to form a new candle.

I’ll show you how my husband and I  turned 30 spent candle jars into 4 fresh candle jars.  The yield will depend on how much wax was left in each jar, so your mileage may vary.

Before we begin, just a quick disclaimer to try this technique at your own risk.
Always take care when handling hot wax! 

Melt Your Old Candle Wax into New Candles Video Tutorial

If you want to reuse candle wax by melting wax from old used candle jars into brand new candles, this video is for you. This video will show our process for melting all the wax out of old candle jars, how to make a guide for your candle wick placement, and how to pour the wax into your new reused jar.  You can watch it below, or you can go directly to my YouTube video How to Melt Your Old Candles into New Candles to REUSE Candle Wax.  The transcription of the video is below.

Supplies: Here’s what you’ll need

This post contains affiliate links to Amazon. Full disclosure: If you happen to make a purchase, I’ll get a small cut that helps to support the development of this blog, at no extra cost to you.

Video Transcription

First, bring a pot of water barely to a boil, then lower the heat to low to reduce to a simmer. There should be deep enough to be higher than the wax area of your jar, but not so deep that the jars are totally surbmerged. Carefully place a jar into the simmering water. If possible, it’s great if the jars can float instead of sitting directly on the bottom.

Wait until the wax turns from a solid into a liquid. The wick clips will become loose and you can pick them out with long tweezers. Set them aside. If the wicks were glued down, pick out the glue as well and set it aside.

For this first jar, carefully pour the wax into the next jar temporarily by using two pairs of tongs. With one pair, grip one side of the jar by the lip, inside and out. With the second pair, grip around the outside of the jar.

Now you have a jar that you can refill. Let’s put in the wicks.

You can buy wicks preassembled or wick that slide into clips. If assembling, cut the wick to length, then use pliers to clamp the wick into the clip.

We used skewer sticks as a placement guide for the new wicks. Cross the skewers into a triangle formation like this, and use tape to secure the sticks to each other and to the jar. Place the wicks into the candles so the clips are resting along the bottom, then drape the wicks over the skewers. The goal will be to pour the hot wax in the centre.

It’s a bit finicky, but it works.

The next step is to melt the next spent candles. The process is exactly the same as last time. Carefully place the jar in the simmering water, then tweeze out the wick clips with the long tweezers.

Remove the jar from the simmering water and slowly pour the liquid wax into your refill jar. Be extremely careful.
Repeat this process until your jar is nearly filled. Be sure to leave a gap at the top to give room for your wick. Let the candle cool at room temperature. Don’t be tempted to put it in the fridge or freezer because there is risk of the glass cracking.

You can basically design your own scent using this process. I sorted my candles into categories by scent palette, like fruity scents, floral scents, masculine scents so that they would mix together well.

I was impressed that the leftover wax from 30 candles translated into 4 candles. Also, our house smelled amazing during the process of making these. I hope that this video inspires you to make use of your leftover candle wax.

Now all that’s left to do is clean these jars, figure out how to repurpose them, and recycle the rest.

Are you going to try this out?  Let me know in the comments!

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