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Use These Five Easy Candle Making Tips to Create Your Own Candle at the Cleveland Candle Company

When my daughter and I went on a short vacation to the Cleveland area, we knew we wanted to try something new we’d never done before. When we found the Cleveland Candle Company, we knew it was the perfect place for us to spend an afternoon. Who wouldn’t love to make a custom candle complete with all the candle-making equipment and candle-making tips one could need?

The outside view of the Cleveland Candle Company

There was a time in my life when I would have wanted to make this kind of candle at home. I may even have made a handful of gifts for friends and family. I have now reached the age of life where I don’t desire to keep all of the candle-making equipment at home, nor do I feel like doing the business of selling candles or cleaning things up, or dealing with the mess after making a candle.

Searching for candle-making supplies, and worrying about double boilers for melting wax, candle wicks, wick sizes, and candle wax seems like a lot of work. So, instead, I’ll leave it to the experts. Isn’t it great to know what we want?

I’m old enough to know what I want and to carry on with it.
The Hip Grandma with a camera

Candle-Making Tip 1 – Make an Appointment

The first step in creating your own candle is to make your appointment at one of the three Cleveland Candle Company locations: Mentor, Coventry, or Ohio City. We knew we wanted to wander a bit, so we chose the Coventry location. Walk-ins are also welcome, but if your group is larger than six people, you’ll do best with an appointment.

I was happy we planned ahead, and they knew we were coming. When Lexi and I arrived, our hostess, Rose, was ready for us with all the candle-making equipment ready to go! It felt great to know she was ready and waiting for us! Especially after we had driven in from out of state. Walking into the candle shop was like a warm fuzzy with the very best smells! We hung up our jackets, and Rose put us right to work.

Making Candles and smelling them is an amazing form of self-care. For more tips, read 5 Minute Self Care: 10 Easy Self-Care Tips For Women

Candle Making Tip 2 – Sniff, sniff, and sniff some more

My next candle-making tip is to be ready to put your nose to work! Rose gave us a little worksheet and asked us to write down our 12 favorite scents. With over 270 scents to choose from, we certainly took our time. My favorites were smoked bacon and pistachio. Not together, of course. The rest of my favorite choices were fruity, although there were hundreds of non-fruity options like vanilla, cedarwood, and rose.

Some of the strangest scents we sniffed were beer, dragon’s blood, and cigar smoke. You could genuinely spend unlimited amounts of time just sniffing the many fragrances. And yes – the candle-making equipment even included some small jars of coffee beans that you could sniff between the candles to ‘cleanse your smeller.’ If you can’t find a few fragrances that you like, then you’re doing something wrong!

Sniff coffee beans to clean your sniffer out between smelling fragrances. This tip works for perfume, too.
hip grandma tip

the author and her daughter posing in front of the many fragrances at the Cleveland Candle Company

Woman smelling the many fragrances in prep to create your own candle at the Cleveland Candle Company

There is no limit to the creativity you can employ when choosing your favorite fragrances. Rose told us the story of one young man who made a hoagie sandwich candle using the scents of bacon, baking bread, and beer. How creative! Not for me, but it might work in Dan’s man cave!

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Candle Making Tip 3 – Choose Your Container

Once we chose all of our favorite smells, Rose got busy gathering the oils while we got busy choosing our candle containers. There are so many different types to choose from and all different sizes and colors. You can create your candle with something basic and small, like a mason jar or something much more unique, like the bottom of a whiskey bottle.

There are so many choices, all of them fun. Your excellent host/hostess will know how much fragrance you need to mix with the wax to get you the perfect level of scent, so your job is simple.

Another great read: How Did I Get That Shot?

Lexi and I worked with two basic 8 oz jars to create our own candles, which will burn for about 45-60 minutes hours each. Of course, other sizes have different burning times. I was selfishly sniffing for my enjoyment because I planned to bring my candle home for me! Lexi was making hers for a Christmas gift for someone she loves, so she was having a great time guessing what fragrances her special giftee would like.

A rack showing all kinds of containers that can be used in candle making at the Cleveland Candle Company

Candle Making Tip 4 – Mix Your Oils with Your Wax

After we chose our glass jar to put the candle in, Rose got busy putting together some oil combos from the choices we had written down. You guessed it – more sniffing followed! What fun we had testing and smelling different combos put together.

Once we decided what we each liked best, we got busy pouring our smelly oils into a small mixing dish in ratios according to our taste. I overpoured my pistachio, so I had a great time adding strawberries and cream to even out the blend. Yum!

After a little more mixing, blending, and sniffing, we were ready to mix our oils with the soy candle. The Cleveland Candle Company uses fragrance oils for their candles and a 100% soy wax base, and a cotton-paper wick. None of the products from Cleveland Candle Company contain any petroleum-based paraffin wax or oils. I loved seeing Rose pour our wax out of a huge wax warming vat, kind of like a Diet Coke machine for wax.

woman sniffing bottles of scent oil at Cleveland Candle Company

Author smelling a mix of candle fragrance oils before mixing with wax

A shelf with a portion of the many oils available at the Cleveland Candle Company

Oils and a jar of wax used in the candle making process

I think one of the silliest parts of the day was choosing a name for each of our uniquely scented candles. Since I recently celebrated my 50th birthday, and mine contained birthday cake scent, I decided to name mine “50th Birthday Blast.” Lexi is a lover of cats, so she chose to call hers “Kitty Cat Kisses.”

Pink background with "Hip Grandma Merch" available on front

Another great read: Why Dogs Are Gross – And Why We Love Them Anyway

Candle Making Tip 5 – Come back to pick up

Rose let us know that it would take about an hour for our candles to cool off and harden, so we headed out for a bit of lunch. Tommy’s Restaurant was just a couple of doors down and had a fantastic selection of lunch dishes – everything you could imagine. Lexi got a cheeseburger, and I chose a hummus plate, which is not always easy to find. The portions were generous, and the food was great!

Lunch at Sammy's in Coventry Cleveland - showing a burger, fries, and a hummus plate — Sammy’s has great lunches and even greater desserts!

A dessert menu from Sammy's Coventry location — Sammy’s has great lunches and even greater desserts!

After lunch, we headed back to the Cleveland Candle Company to pick up our candles. Rose had them all packaged up and ready for us to take home. Hooray! We are now official bonafide candle makers!

I can honestly say that this was a super fun experience! If you want to create your own candle, the Cleveland Candle Company is a great place to begin. They have all of the candle-making equipment right on-site, and your helpful host or hostess will hook you up with all the best candle-making tips while you work!

And bonus – if you’re not into burning a candle with an open flame, you can pick up a little warmer plate to set your candle on to get the same result. Scarlett No’Hara (my bald cat) is nosier than even a hairy cat at my house, so I don’t trust her to leave my candles alone. So you guessed it! I’ll be “burning” my candle on a warming plate.

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Wrapping it all up

If you’re looking for a fun girls’ night out or a date night, this is the event for you! Under the care of your candle-making instructor, you will leave with a personalized fragranced candle. The Cleveland Candle Co offers private parties and also hosts Lip Balm or Paint classes, which include candle-making workshops, too. Just bring 5 of your friends along with you, and you can enjoy a well-scented evening of good, clean, fun learning painting, making lip balms, and making candles!

sign showing that all of the Cleveland Candle Company's jars are made in the US — The Cleveland Candle Company pays attention to their candle making equipment and supplies

local sourcing sign showing that 90% of all oils used at the Cleveland Candle Company are sourced from Ohio — The Cleveland Candle Company pays attention to their candle making equipment and supplies

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