Video:How to Marble Color in Container Candles

Transcript:How to Marble Color in Container Candles

Hi, I'm David Fisher for About.com. Today we are going to make an interesting variation on the basic container candle. You do not have to use just one color on your container candles. We are actually going to marble color into them.

Supplies Needed to Marble Color in Candles

For this project you will need:

• a basic container candle cooled just enough so that the top is solid
• some toothpicks
• liquid candle colorant. Although chips are great for coloring candles, you will need to use liquid dyes for this project
• a long piece of wire or a long wick pin like this one
• a heat gun

Poke Holes in the Candle

To get started take your long wick pin or piece of wire and poke holes down the side of the candle all the way to the bottom. Depending on how many veins of color you want will depend on how many holes you poke.

Add Color to the Holes

Then, using your toothpick, dip just a tiny bit of color into each of the holes. I am using a tiny bit of color, maybe a sixth of a drop. A little bit of this candle color goes a long ways.

Spread Color Through the Candles

Using your heat gun, first heat the top of the gun gently so that the dye will start to mix with a little bit of the melting wax. You will see the melted now colored wax start to seep down the holes you have made. Now, heat the sides of the jar giving even coverage up and down. I gave each line (or hole or tunnel whatever you want to call it) about 10 seconds with the heat gun up and down and then move on to the next one.

As you can see as the wax on the sides melts and combined with the dye up above, you start to get swirling and marbling. Continue heating the sides of the candles melting more wax. The dye and the wax will continue to mix and swirl just by the convection caused by the heated wax.

You can help things by swirling the jar a little yourself, or if you are really eager to take charge, use the wick pin or wire to move the color around a bit too. A word of caution, the convection action of the hot wax will continue for a while even after you have stopped heating and swirling. Meaning, do not go overboard with the heating and swirling, just plain physics will do a lot of it for you.

As you can see, you can never be quite sure how the colors and wax are going to mix together. But you are guaranteed that the results will always be interesting. Thanks for watching. For more information please visit us on the Web at About.com.