craftgrrl | Make your own wax tarts.

Did you ever get tired of spending money on wax tarts? Did you ever want to know how to make them with a good strong throw? I made my own tarts last night and they are better than yankee and better than a lot of the etailer tarts I have ever tried. Here are two journal entries kind of jumbled together with my notes and put together so if you read through the disjointed entries you will be able to make wonderful wax tarts that have super throw.

Crossposted to candlewhores

I made wax tarts last night. This is after experimenting with 100% soy wax about a week or so again and last night they were 100% paraffin wax. The paraffin wax has a much stronger throw than the soy wax does. I posted my experiments on my forum last night

1lb of paraffin heated to 175 and adding color and let cool
1 teaspoon of vybar
1.5 ounces of fragrance oil

Pour at 150 degrees (add fragrance at 160 and stir like the dickens). Save some for a second pour

The best and strongest tarts you ever did see.

That is my conclusion at this point.

Better or as good as the best tarts I ever purchased. Lost my sense of smell from working with them but mom says the house smells good, and from burning one right away with the window open.... So does the neighbor.

Then this morning I posted:

Update: I left one of the tarts in my burner all night in the bedroom. It is one of those that uses the lightbulb and makes for a perfect night light so I don't stub my toe when I wake in the middle of the night to piddle. Anyway, the tart that I burned last night still is strong in here and that is after working with them, then sleeping in the same room as it burning all night. The portions I posted last night seem to be perfect. I just can't believe how much money I am going to save with making my own tarts. I already had a bunch in my stash from 2 other people that I bought last winter, and now a bunch that I made.

I have to say that I am very pleased with how the ones I made last night turned out.

I will never ever buy another tart ever again. Just so you know 1.5 lbs. of wax makes a lot of tarts. You get about 20 tarts from that. I made maple sticky buns and then an apple pie blend last night.

OK people go forth and create tarts! I want to hear how yours turn out.

I think later I will make some 1/2 soy and 1/2 paraffin wax blended tarts to experiment. So far the 100% soy does not have nearly the throw that the 100% paraffin does.

I have some molds but you can also use those foil cupcake/candy liners for muffin tins. They sell them in various sizes and I got the ones that hold about 1/2 ounce from here (so you need to burn 2 at a time) or you can find tart molds really cheap online and probably at some discount store. I have some tart molds I got online over a year ago for really super cheap. You can google those or even froogle them to find the cheapest source.

http://www.cakesbyjan.com/store/index2.asp?ID=3 That is a cheap place for the foil mini cupcake liners that you can pour directly in to if you want to use those instead.

Then I got my wax from Bitter Creek Candle Supply and my vybar from there too. I got 20lbs of the straight paraffin wax and one pound of vybar. It came to about $40 with shipping. That should be enough wax to last me for the rest of my life considering after I use up the tarts I pour in to votive molds and make little votives to keep burning in the bathroom and keep the cat box smell down despite my scooping efforts sometimes that is not enough. Anyhoo....

A couple of places for good candle scents.

http://www.carolinacandlesupplies.com/Scents/Scents-A.asp

http://www.kycandlewaxsupply.com/fragrance.htm

http://candlesupplys.us/

http://candlesupply.com (this is where I got the paraffin and vybar from)

You will need to buy the 2 ounce bottles for each pound of wax as 1 ounce is just not enough (you need 1.5 ounces per pound of wax). You will have about 1/2 ounce left over but can use them to blend with other oils later on and make more tarts. Just get scents that you think would blend nice together (like groups of florals or groups of bakery items, etc)

The initial money adds up a little but once you have your supplies you will save a ton. I used 1.5 pounds of wax last night and have a lot of tarts sitting here. I am going to save so much money! Never again will I ever purchase another tart for my tart burner.

When you make these use a scale to weigh the wax and the fragrance oils. I have a fancy digital scale but since this is not soapmaking (I make my own CP soap from scratch) I am sure a cheap kitchen scale would work as you don't need to be as exact as you do with soapmaking to make candle/wax items.