Creating from concrete has been a fascinating journey full of challenges and meaningful lessons. Like all artisan work, it teaches you to be more humble, patient and kind to the materials you work with. We'll guide you shortly through the step-by-step of our handmade vessels.
The process of creation of our unique artisan candles in handmade vessels starts with concrete and to be more specific, with finding the right formula. lots of people work with fast cement, we chose to work with ordinary concrete which is a mix of sand, cement and water because we love the texture we can get out of it afterwards. It took us a lot of time to find the consistency we liked, and that gave us the result we wanted.
We pour the mix into prepared moulds and shake the air bubbles out.
Next, step it to let the concrete dry, and we de-mould. The vessels need to dry completely before we move on to our favourite point: applying our unique textures. The drying process can take up to several days, depending on the temperature. Now, textures is the part we like most, it's fascinating how concrete reacts to different materials. It depends on temperature, humidity, each time the outcome is different. We have developed our own oxides to make it even more ours; the process of working on the oxides was indeed an adventure full of surprises and "accidents" that completely changed our vision several times. We apply the texture vessel by vessel and let them soak and transform. Here the main character is the oxide, we let it do the magic. We repeat the process with different oxides and natural pigments so they overlap and create even more unique landscapes on the vessels.
After the vessels are dry, we apply a sealer to prevent the wax from staining the walls of the jar. It's a long process, and the vessels sometimes need even four layers of product for that reason, we decided to look for an alternative solution, and starting in November, we will be working only with a beautiful gold metal refill container. But more about that another time. Coming back to concrete, we start the final process of candle-making. My personal favourite, because I just love to work with fragrances. We use only pure essential oils, botanical oils and clean, phthalate-free fragrance oils to make our candles. Carefully selected after tons and tons of testing. I love it when the room fills up with aromas of fresh rose, bergamot, lavender, warm cedar wood, patchouli and many many more. Making a candle looks easy when watching tutorials on YouTube but it actually is quite a science where you need to keep to the formula, note down any temperature change, be aware of the temperature in the room and many more factors I would never think of. This process also taught us patience and we're still working on improvements, especially in our essential oils 100% natural candles that will soon go through a little refresh. But to know more about the process itself, you'll have to wait for the next chapter where I will describe our candle-making process in detail.
With love,
Magda