Copyright 2018 Monica McConkey. All rights reserved.[/caption]
Now that Lent has begun, are you looking for a nice #CatholicCraft to foster family prayer or change up your home altar? Do you have a few too many tired/well-used/burnt votive candles lying around the house?
We did ... and since they are blessed, we didn't want to throw them away or even bury them (who wants glass buried in their garden?) so we decided to give them a little makeover and add some Super Saints to our collection of saint candles! There was some scrubbing (to remove soot and worn-out holy images) and some boiling water (to melt the wax) but we figure if we've worn out the blessing of our candles, we'll just ask our family priest to bless them when he comes over next time!
(Any priests out there: do we need to ask a priest to re-bless these candles since they've been scoured, melted, re-filled and recycled?)
Recycling Votive Candles
Visit Equipping Catholic Families for the full Recycling Votive Candles Tutorial. Our first step was to gather all of our mostly-used votive candles and clean off the soot and remove burnt wick pieces. If the original holy images are still in good condition, you might be able to keep them intact. We found it pretty easy to remove the images after soaking the candles in water and melting the wax. We made sure any remnants of wicks were removed from the hot wax.
Copyright 2018 Monica McConkey. All rights reserved.[/caption]
We didn't have any new wicks from the craft store on hand, so we used dollar-store candlesticks! The trick is to hold them in place while melted wax is poured in around the candlestick. The candlestick needs to be secured in place until each layer or 'pour' of wax sets.
Copyright 2018 Monica McConkey. All rights reserved.[/caption]
We chose our Super Saints images from this craft kit (14 saints to choose from). You could also paint your own Super Saints with the black and white templates in the Saint Scripts Craft Kits. Across these three craft kits, there are 64 saints!
Copyright 2018 Monica McConkey. All rights reserved.[/caption]
Alternatively, the images of our new Lock Screens include the text of a prayer prompt on each one along with a super cute Super Saint. The jpegs are close to 4"x7" so they can accommodate most glass votive candles.
Copyright 2018 Monica McConkey. All rights reserved.[/caption]
We cut out the images, then tacked them in place where we wanted them on the outside of the wax-filled glass votives. We then cut a piece of wax paper that fit the full circumference of the votive glass and used a hair dryer to adhere it on top of the image.
Copyright 2018 Monica McConkey. All rights reserved.[/caption]
Copyright 2018 Monica McConkey. All rights reserved.[/caption]
The adhered wax paper covers and protects the image and also makes the votive glass look a little frosted.
We lit the candles and let them burn down a little until they were pretty much flush with the rest of the wax.
Do you have any old votive candles and stubby candles lying around? Try this craft!
Copyright 2018 Monica McConkey
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