How to make a candle!

I don't know where I got this idea from, but at 2am last night I stumbled upon a weird part of google... and today I ended up making candles!
So here it is, how to make your own candle, hope you enjoy! :)

 First of all, decide upon a container which you would like to make your candle in. I found this little pot in my cupboard, it's a pastel blue- I love the colour.

 Next, find some old candles. The little ones are really easy to use, and are white so you can easily make your own colour with them. But if you would like a specific colour, find a coloured candle. I found this orange one, i liked the intense colour so i used it.

 Get a container. Bare in mind that you'll be putting this over a pan of boiling water, so choose an appropriate size and material.

 Get a string for your candle. I didn't actually have any string, therefore I used one from my other candles. Make sure it goes over the top of your container. Next stick it down with some tape, don't worry if it doesn't stand up at this point. Next, get a little stick (I used a cocktail stick), and stick it down with tape over the pot. Now, using tape, secure the string to the stick, make sure the string reaches the cocktail stick, if not it's too short.

 Get your candle, and take your string out. If you don't have any string for the previous step, use string from one of these candles- you won't need it anymore. Just make sure it's the right size.

 Break up all your candles into tiny pieces, remember- the smaller your candles broken into, the quicker it will melt.

 Get a pan of water, and stick it on the highest possible gas mark. Wait until the water is boiling, then put the container full of candles on top.

 Stir the candles around, until it becomes liquified wax. This might take a while, took me about 15 minutes until they fully melted.
Side note- if you didn't know, this is a very good way of melting chocolate. Replace the candles with chocolate. It's a great method, I've NEVER burnt chocolate melting it this way.

 Pick a colour of food colouring which you would like your candles to turn, as well as food flavouring- that makes the scent. Basically, when i put my food colouring in (i chose yellow), it just floated around at the bottom. When i mixed it even more, it did kind of turn the wax a darker shade of yellow. When the candles was ready, there was actually a pool of darker wax at the bottom. So if i were you, i'd mix it around a lot. Also, it might not have worked so well for me, because my wax was already coloured. As for the vanilla, that worked pretty well- but i do recommend adding a lot more than you would to a cake.

 Next pour the wax into your pot. Depending on how wide and deep your container is, it might take a while to cool down and harden. You might want to clean up at this point- and yes, cleaning up those dirty containers that were full of dried wax, was a nightmare.

And there you go! Your own home made candles!

Hope you enjoyed this post!

This was my first time making my own candles, I definitely need to improve for next time- but it was fun making them, and now i have much more interesting candles than i did before. 

Let me know how yours went down below, maybe send me a picture of the candles?

Don't forget to comment and follow. 

Thanks <3

Vanilla Cupcakes!

So today I felt like making so cupcakes, and I decided to also blog about it!
So here is a recipe for vanilla cupcakes, hope you like it!
Ingredients:
110g butter or margarine, softened at room temperature
110g caster sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
110g self raising flour
1-2 tbsp milk
For the butter icing: 
140g butter, softened
280g icing sugar
1-2 tbsp milk
a few drops food colouring

 Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4 and line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cases.
Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl until pale.

 Beat the eggs a little at a time, then add vanilla extract. I usually add a bit more vanilla extract than the recipe says, purely because I love vanilla!

Mix the mixture with the flour using a large metal spoon, adding milk until the mixture is a dropping consistency. 

 Spoon the mixture into the paper cases until they are half full. I also had enough mixture for a heart muffin tin.

 Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes, or until golden on top and a skewer inserted into one of the cupcakes comes out clean.

For the butter icing, beat the  butter in a large bowl until soft.

 Add about half of the icing, and beat until smooth.

 Next, add the remaining icing sugar with a tablespoon of milk, adding more milk if necessary, until the mixture is smooth and creamy.

 Add the food colouring, and mix until well combined. You can add any colour you like, I went for yellow... even though the mixture was already quite yellow from the butter. But I liked the colour in the end, came out as an intense yellow- reminded me of Easter :)

 What you should do:
Spoon the icing into a piping bag, and pipe the icing using a spiralling motion onto the cup cakes in a large swirl.
What I did:
Piping bags hate me. It's official. So instead of piping the icing, I just spread it over the cupcakes. I do not recommend doing this, unless piping bags hate you as well, because it comes out uneven. But in the end, it's your choice :)

 I also found these cute sprinkles in my cupboard, and decided to use them. I only had a little bit left of, what i can only describe as, pink sugar cylinders. They're cute.
I brought these sprinkles from Tesco. They have a huge selection of baking decorations in Tesco, so I recommend going there if you need something to make your baking look a bit cuter.

The end result :)
Just keep in mind that PIPING BAGS HATE ME...!
Now it's time for my favourite part- eating cupcakes! Yey!
Mine tasted great, I think that this recipe is really good- so why don't you have a go?
Comment down below and say hi, maybe you can send me a pic of your cup cakes?
Remember to follow and share!

Thank you <3

 x