In the middle of Saxon Switzerland you can not only experience the old handicraft of dipping candles but you can make them yourself. So we had to try it…
In an old huge barn you can get everything related to candles and what you need for making your own.
First you bring your personal belongings to the cloak room and then you have to choose from the samples which form you want to do. That is a difficult decision.
Then you get at the entrance a wooden plate.
With this plate you can dip candles or even make lanterns or bowls out of wax. Put the wick into the slits at the plate. One wick makes two candles.
First you let the wick soak for 10 seconds.
After that the wick is dipped shortly into the wax. Afterwards you let it dry for around one minute. You can hang the plate on the prepared hooks.
You can choose between 13 different colours and can mix them to your heart's content. But only from light to dark colours.
So you dip the candle again and again into the wax and let them drip.
The drops at the lower end you have to cut off regularly.
If you have no time or are a galoot there are prepared candles that you can just dye colourful or decorate.
In case you want to spend some time and like the idea of repeating a movement several times you dip the candle 35 times. After that you have a nice candle.
You can decorate the candle if you wish
There are incredible pattern
But you can also make a lantern. For that you need to fix a piece of paper on a wire.
Also the paper is dipped into the wax.
As the lantern shall let the light through you only dip it four times. Then you take the wire out.
Form the paper carefully and let it cool down.
Finally you can decorate the lantern with wax.
You can also use your own photos to make a lantern.
Everybody can make candles. Young and old. At the barn you will also find a restaurant. So you can have a bite while waiting for your own candles to cool.
Here are our results
I think that this is quite nice for the first try. It was fun anyway. Inbetween you think how some colour mixtures will look like. And that is really interesting.
Entrance is free. You pay your candles by weight. A very nice thing to do as you can take home the results in the end as a memory.