Monastery Crafts: The Making of Candles

One Monastery craft that you all know about is our candle-making. Started a few years ago by Sr. Mary Catharine, Sr. Maria Johanna has taken over the reigns of the candle crafting operations. While Sister may be the main candle maker, the other novices help out as well. Due to an overall lack of room in the monastery, the candle department is housed partly at the bottom of a stairwell.

Here we'll follow Sister through the steps of making both jar candles and beeswax Easter Egg candles (currently out of season). There are a lot of steps involved, and unfortunately the camera missed a few, but we think you'll get the idea! Descriptions are under each picture. Special thanks to Sr. Maria Johanna for providing the explanations for each step! This may take awhile to load, as there are a lot of pictures!

Crafting Jar Candles

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Candle Wax

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Adding solid wax to the melter.

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Wicks for Jar Candles

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Each wick is stuck to the bottom of a jar.

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Candle Fragrance

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Step 1: Measuring out the fragrance by weight.

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Step 2: Adding the color chips

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Color Chips and Fragrance

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Step 3: Getting melted wax from the pot

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Step 4: Adding the melted wax (measured by weight)

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Step 5: Letting the color chips melt in the melted wax

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Step 6: Pouring the Candles

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Step 7: Popsicle stick added to hold the wick in place. Missing steps: cutting the wicks and packaging!

 

Crafting Beeswax Carved Easter Egg Candles

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Step 1: Preparing the scale

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Step 2: Measuring out the white wax for colored candles

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Step 3: Adding wax to the melting pot

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Melting wax

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Missing pictures! Steps 4 & 5 involve adding dye to the melted wax and pouring the candles into the molds

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An empty mold with the wick threaded through.

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Mold ready for wax!

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Step 6: Cutting the wicks off of the semi-hardened candles

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Step 7: Using the heat gun so the added wax will adhere better and pouring a second time until the mold is full.

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This is necessary because the wax from the first pour shrinks as it cools.

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It also permits the candle-maker to make a smooth surface for the bottom of the candle without using the griddle after the candle is taken out of the mold.

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Missing: removing the candles from the mold and packaging! Here are the candles all packaged.

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Sr. Candle-maker with the finished product!