Sand Candles

I spent the past few days making sand candles. That almost sounds like I've spent the entire day, several days in a row, making candles. But it's more like an hour here, half-an-hour there to come up with four nice-looking candles.

As with most things in life, especially if one is past a certain age, there's a back story. One doesn't simply decide I'm bored, I think I'll make sand candles today and then jump in and do it. For starters, you have to have wax with which to make the candles, unless you're making soy or bees wax candles.

Most of what is commonly called wax these days is actually paraffin, a petroleum-based substance. (Candlescience.com is a basic site for candle stuff; for a short, easy to read blurb on paraffin, check here.)

But back to the sand candles. Besides wax, you've got to have sand. I know, shocking, right? Sand candles, sand. You also need wicks so you can light the candles, and some way to anchor the bottom of the wick so that it doesn't float to the surface of the liquid wax. Then, if you want your candles to be something other than white, and maybe even have a nice scent, you'll need these, too.

Okay, so I had all this stuff. I'd bought wax - tons and tons of it - that I'd bought over the years. Maybe not tons of it, but I'd bought enough of the stuff in 14-pound blocks to be ridiculous. I still had the busted up remnants of a block of wax, as well as some leftover coloring, scents, molds, and wicks.

Over the past ten years or so, I'd made chunk candles. This involved melting several blocks of wax in small amounts, adding different colors to each batch, pouring each batch into a large pan (old, beat-up metal baking pans are great for this), then, letting each batch harden. Somewhere along the hardening process, when the wax is starting to firm up and no longer liquidy, but not hard hard, I'd take a sharp knife and cut criss-cross lines in the wax. That way, when the wax was hard, it'd break up fairly easily.

Once I had enough variety of colored chunks, I'd take the candle molds out, oil up the inside of them (this makes sliding the hardened candles out a lot easier), start melting some colored wax, making sure to dip the wicks into the hot liquid, then put the wicks into the molds. (There are holes in the bottom of most of the molds I used, through which to thread the wicks. You then have to have a way to finish plugging the hole.) Then, as the wax melted, I'd take chunks of wax in complimentary colors and arrange them throughout the molds in such a way that they show up around the edges of the candle after the main color was poured.

The nice thing with these chunk candles is that you can use the colors to make candles for different holidays and times of the year: a combination of red, green and white for winter holidays; red, white and blue for, say, the 4th of July; reds, oranges, yellows and browns for fall, etc. The main problem with the chunk candles happens to be the fact that you need tons of different colored chunks and a ton of time. Even with all the chunks ready, making a batch of chunk candles will easily eat up a couple of hours at a time - and that's not counting letting the candles cool and harden.

Sand candles are easier. You take sand, put it into a container, such as a small casserole dish, then use your hands to scoop out the candle's shape. While chunk candles (or most candles, for that matter) tend to be vertical, sand candles are horizontal. Once you dig out the shape, making sure that the bottom will be flat (and anchoring the wick[s]), you can add shells around the edges. This is what I like to do, since it adds a little more interest to the candle.

So, getting back to the candle-making: I knew I had wax set aside, just being there. I also knew I didn't have the time or energy to make chunk candles. Also, my daughter, M.H., and her family live near the beach. M.H. is frequently offering to drive me to the beach. We've actually managed to make it there once without a car mishap.

I'd mentioned once or twice that I needed sand for sand candles. M.H. offered to pick sand up the next time she went to the beach. Of course, when she'd get there, she wouldn't have anything to bring any sand home in. Several weeks ago, though, she swung by my place.

"How about coming with me?" she asked when she was ready to leave. "I've got to stop by work for a little while, and then wanted to go to the beach."

Off we went. After stopping by work, we picked up a couple of small pails to carry sand home in, then headed for the beach.

The sky was gray and looked like it might rain before the end of the day; it fit in well with the gray water and lighter-colored sand. M.H. and I walked around, picking up shells, walking ankle-deep into the water, enjoying the almost-empty beach. Between the sound of the waves, the raucous cawing of seagulls, the sound of the wind, and the skittishness of the small sandpipers, it was wildly peaceful. (If you've ever walked on the beach before a storm, you know that wildly peaceful in not an oxymoron.) The occasional person walking by didn't bother me the way seeing people on a packed beach would have.

Just before we left the beach with our shells, we filled the two small pails with sand, then put the pails into a couple of bags and tied the tops to keep the sand in.

Periodically, M.H. would ask if I'd made any sand candles yet, and I'd have to tell her I hadn't. We hang up and I'd think I really should get around to making them. After all, I'd mentioned needing the sand and shells so often to make them, it would be crazy not to.

A couple of days ago, I pulled down a small casserole container and filled it with sand. Then, as the wax melted into a blue-ish green, I set some broken shells around the edges of the scooped-out mold.

The first candle came out beautifully; so did the next three that I made yesterday. When M.H. and her daughter G. came by today, I showed her four sand candles.

"They're neat," M.H. said. "But why is there sand all over the outside of the candles?" I explained that was how I'd made the molds; she'd thought I added the sand to the wax. We both had different ideas of what sand candles meant.

I have to admit: adding sand to the wax might not be a bad idea.

Now if I could get another hour or two to try making sand candles with sand in the wax, that just might be something to see!