Sometimes, as well, your upcycling inspiration deserts you, and you find you have no taste for all of the objectively VERY cool candle holders that you know how to make from building blocks and vodka bottles and tea cups. What you want is just a simple candle holder, dang it! A candle holder with neutral colors, clean lines, and a solid shape. A candle holder that you can have multiples of, but that won’t distract from your table settings and centerpieces and all the other decorative crap on your coffee table. Sometimes, Friends, you just have to give in, buy a candle holder mold, and vow to use the snot out of it to make it worth it.
Materials:
To make these molded candle holders, you will need:
store-bought candle holder mold. Just because I’m advocating store-bought here doesn’t meant that I’m not advocating second-hand! Try ebay, Freecycle, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, local garage or estate sales, local auctions, and, if you’re very, VERY lucky, maybe even your own local arts and crafts reuse store. People give up their old hobbies all the time (ask me how I know this, ahem…), and it’s not uncommon to see someone’s entire candlemaking hobby sold off dirt-cheap as a single lot. plaster of Paris, Portland cement, or similar mold material. You can complete this project with anything pourable but non-flammable. For instance, I’m not a resin crafter so I haven’t tried this first-hand, but epoxy resin would work here! measuring and mixing supplies. Depending on your mold material, these can be VERY basic. I use old take-out soda cups, used popsicle sticks, and water from my garden hose to mix up most of my plaster of Paris and Portland cement projects.
Step 1: Clean and prep your materials.
Especially if you’ve bought second-hand, you want to make sure your mold is squeaky clean. Every crafter seems to have their own perfected method for cleaning silicone molds, but we all agree on soap and water! When I’m working with plaster of Paris or Portland cement, I always use mixing containers and tools that are themselves second-hand and that are easily tossed in the garbage or the recycling if I don’t clean them out to reuse them. My favorite local pizza shop has kept me in mixing cups for a solid twenty years now!
Step 2: Measure and mix your mold material.
Mind you, when I tell you to measure, I’m really telling you to “measure.” Whether I’m working with plaster of Paris or Portland cement, I eyeball the amount of mix that I want for my particular project. The ability to accurately eyeball how much mix you need to fill a specific mold will come with practice. Until then, have a second mold on hand that you can pour the extra into. I’ve got a mini cylinder mold that I like to pour my excess into, because I can always use a couple more pattern weights! Gradually add water to your mix and stir vigorously until the mixture has about the same consistency as pancake batter. Definitely stir all those lumps out! For a mold with thinner parts like this candle holder mold, I like to also make my mix a little thinner to help it make its way all the way down those crevices. Just don’t let it get watery. If it does get too loose, add some more powder and keep stirring.
Step 3: Pour the mixture into the mold.
As illustrated above, the best place to do this project is outside on a dirty plastic folding table. Bonus points for having a super old cafeteria tray to catch the mess! Pour the mixture into the mold, making sure it gets all the way down to the bottom and into any crevices and fills the mold all the way to the top. Use your stirring tool as a straight edge to scrape the top of the mold even with the sides; this will give you a nice bottom on your finished mold. When the mold is filled, gently lift up and thump down the mold about a million times to work all the little bubbles out. See those bubbles that have just come up in the above photo? I thumped that mold about half a million times to get them, and then I thumped it about half a million more times to get the rest of them!
Step 4: Let the candle holder cure.
The waiting is the hardest part, but it’s also the most important! When I put plaster of Paris into this candle holder mold, I can de-mold it about 24 hours later, and it feels pretty well cured about 24 hours after that. When I put Portland cement into this candle holder mold, though, I might as well just learn to live my life with a candle holder mold full of cement, because I swear it takes at LEAST a week before I can confidently de-mold it, and sometimes I even wait another couple of days to make sure I don’t break the more delicate parts. The wait time for cement is ridiculous, but I love the cement candle holders best! Plaster of Paris, in particular, takes paint like a dream, so feel free to embellish your completed candle holders. Then you can package them with homemade candles as presents, or keep them all for yourself because you finally have exactly the minimalist, clean-lined, neutral-toned candle holder of your dreams!
