Candle Design Ideas

Whether you’ve been making candles for a while or are new to the activity, it is always a good idea to have a list of design ideas for your next batch of candles. Though candles have been around for thousands of years, candle makers are always innovating. For great candle design ideas, what are the latest trends in candle making?

The latest trends in candle making involve the use of new and innovative materials. Here are some trends currently proliferating across the candle industry:

These are the Top 5 most popular candle design ideas:

1. Crackle candles
2. Bubble Candles 
3. Body Candles
4. Soy candles
5. Tomato-scented candles 

Some of these trends have been around for a while but are still popular. Others are very new. All of them can be mastered by beginners and advanced candle makers alike. Try adding one of these new candles to your portfolio

Crackle Candles

Crackle candles, also known as crackling candles, exploded on the scene when they were invented in 2001. Even now, many years later, they remain popular and are a top seller for many online retailers. 

Crackle candles have wooden wicks, instead of traditional fiber-based ones. As crackling candles burn, they exude a soothing sound like the burning of a crackling fireplace.

Candles were already being made that appealed to our senses of sight and smell. Now you can make ones that appeal to our sense of hearing as well, for a tri-sensory experience.

How to Make Crackle Candles

Most of the materials you use for crackle candles are the same as traditional candles with only two differences. First, you will obviously have to buy wooden wicks. Second, you will also need base clips. For traditional candles, you usually tie the wick from above to something like a clothespin, so it doesn’t fall in while the wax hardens.

You can’t tie a wooden wick from above, which is why you use a base clip. Base clips are usually made of metal and hold the wick upright from the bottom as you pour the wax. 

When it comes to buying wooden wicks and base clips, you can find them at online candle retailers like Wooden Wicks, which has a large collection of wooden wicks in all shapes and sizes. 

Besides the materials, and standing the wick upright using a base clip, you would make crackle candles just like any other candle. 

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Bubble Candles

Bubble candles incorporate an innovative design concept to look like a Rubik’s Cube of bubbles. You can find them for sale almost everywhere and Bubblecandle.com specializes in selling these unique candles. It is not difficult, however, to make your own.

Bubble candles are a type of pillar candle. What defines a pillar candle is the fact that it uses a hard wax that can stand on its own without the use of a container. If, as you hold a candle in your hand, you are touching the wax directly instead of an outer container, you are holding a pillar candle.

How to Make Bubble Candles

I learned how to make my first bubble candle by watching this awesome tutorial. It shows you everything about bubble candle making, including how to thread the wick through the top of your bubble candle mold. 

After allowing your candle to cure for at least 12 hours, you can pull it out of the mold. What you will have is a delightful bubble candle, one of the coolest candle making trends today. 

Aside from your normal candle making materials, the only other thing you will need is the bubble candle mold, which you can buy from online candle suppliers and even here on Amazon. 

Body Candles

Body candles are another great type of pillar candle. The only difference is that instead of being shaped like cubes or bubbles, you can make them in various shapes of the human body, both male and female figures, though female figures seem to be more popular. Here are some examples of 20 Stylish Body Candles. 

This video shows the making of a female body torso candle. Due to the candle’s many curves, they can be a bit more advanced than making a bubble candle. They are also taller and more fragile, so it will take a practiced hand to extract the candle from the mold without breaking it.

Otherwise, these candles are made the same way as bubble candles, with a mold and inserting the wick through the bottom, then pouring in the candle wax upside down. 

Soy Candles

The use of soy wax in candles is another relatively recent innovation, having only been invented in 1992. With today’s robust candle supplier market, candle hobbyists can and should consider incorporating soy wax in many of their candle designs. 

Soy wax is popular these days because it offers a cleaner burning alternative to paraffin, traditionally used in most homemade and store-bought candles. It is also relatively easy to use even for beginners.

Ideal Uses of Soy Wax

Soy is ideally used in container-poured candles. One advantage it has over many other waxes is its excellent scent throw. Both reasons are why soy wax is my number one go-to candle wax. Of the natural waxes that are not petroleum-based, soy is also the least expensive wax. It is a great way to introduce sustainability into your candle-making without paying a high price.

Shortcomings of Soy Wax

When you start using soy wax in your candle-making, you might like it so much in fact that you decide to use it for every candle. But there are some reasons why you may not want to use it in some of your candle designs.

If you are making pillar candles, like the bubble candle and body candle designs listed above, for instance, you want to stay away from using pure soy wax. As wax, soy is on the softer side, so you don’t want to use it in any candles that are not poured into an outer container. 

You can buy soy wax-paraffin blends for a slightly stiffer wax that is still mostly composed of soy wax. But if you want to avoid paraffin altogether, you can buy a special soy wax blend that adds soy-based additives to regular soy wax for a total soy product you can use even in your pillar candle-making, like this one from Candle Science.

For just about every other candle type, however, soy wax is a great element to incorporate into the design of your candle. 

Tomato-Scented Candles

If you aren’t already making scented candles, you should be. They scare a lot of candle-hobbyists off because making them requires the extra step of mixing fragrant oils into the wax while it is still warm. But you can’t truly call yourself a candle-making enthusiast until you’ve tried making at least one scented candle.

But Tomato-Scented Candles?

According to New York Magazine, the latest trend in scented candles is tomato-based fragrances. Sound ridiculous? I tried it myself and tomato candles are lovely, both to make and to burn. 

There are different types of tomato aromas you can incorporate in your candle design, from ones that fill your home with the nurturing ambience of an Italian kitchen to ones that emit an earthy, farm-fresh aroma. Candles scented like heirloom tomatoes are especially popular. 

How to Make Tomato-Scented Candles

All you need to add to your candle to make it tomato-scented is the right fragrant oil. This one, according to its description, smells like a “true to life freshly crushed tomato leaf from the garden.” It has more of an outdoorsy smell with gentle tomato overtones than this one from Wooden Wicks that combines the smell of tomato with basil and tiger grass.  

Soy wax is a perfect complement to tomato-scented candles. So, for a candle design idea that uses multiple current trends, you can easily make a tomato-scented, soy-based, candle with a wooden wick!

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Related Questions

What are the best scented candles to support meditation?

People all over the world incorporate candles into their meditation practices. Candle flames can be an excellent visual aid to finding your way to a state of presence. Certain scents, especially chamomile and lavender, can deepen your relaxation, helping you meditate. 

Why do candles need to cure?

For anyone making homemade candles or candles for sale, curing is an important part of the process, especially for scented candles. Curing allows the fragrant oil to bind to the candle wax, which will allow for a stronger-scented candle.

 

Looking to start your own candle making business, check out my startup documents here

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