What To Do With Candles In Glass Jars?
[ 12 May 2007 ]
“Women with candles have replaced women with cats as the new sad thing.”
— Samantha Jones
On the blackcigarette community today, someone asked the following…
“I’ll admit, sometimes I’m drawn to buy something just for its pretty packaging, its good looks. Especially with candles, intricate glass etching goes a long way with me, like for example candles by Modern Alchemy. But now I’m faced with a question. What do you do with the pretty glass holders the candles come in, once the candles are spent? Do you throw them away, or save them? Since the design on the glass was half the appeal, it seems like it would be a waste to throw it away. Do you think it would be tacky to save it? I have a mind to clean out the old wax and wick at the bottom and repour a new candle in its place – how would I go about doing that?”
You could certainly clean it out & just put a tealight or votive in its place, but that’s a bit dull & I think we can do better than that, personally. It seems almost offensive to replace say, a Diptyque or Rigaud candle with a tealight which will burn out in 3 hours.
The best thing to do is use the container for storage of some description. I am a great fan of using jars & bottles for holding little collections of things, & I never really throw anything pretty away. It always gets used somehow — whether it’s fresh white lilies in a French absinthe bottle or goldfish in a cookie jar — & you can always use them as the packaging of a gift for a friend.
If you have a little table by the front door, you could use it hold your keys or as a paperweight for any boring mail which comes your way (read: bills). Most of the candle glasses are the perfect size for storing jewellery, whether rings, beads, brooches or hair-clips. Hang earrings off the lip of the jar.
Smokers (naughty!) can empty out a packet of cigarettes into the jar, with the filters pointing upward, for a super-decadent, ’40s kind of feel. If you don’t smoke, or are trying to quit, you could always do this with candy cigarettes!
Use the candle glass to hold collections of anything small that you have a lot of — seed pods, buttons, feathers, fake moustaches, sequins, lip balm, bindis in little metal pots, beads, or pearl-tipped pins. Try making a miniature planter. Fill it with gobstoppers or gummy bears.
Decorate your working environment by using the empty glass to hold your business cards, paperclips, golf pencils, sticks of white chalk, words of wisdom from fortune cookies…
Though I guess in order to do the above, you need the candle holder first! Here then, are some of the most beautifully-presented candles I’ve found. The scent descriptions sound pretty delicious too. Hold me back!
My favourite, Diptyque candles smell incredible & look amazing. I have yet to own one, but I bought my mother a Tilleul-scented one for her birthday! In Sex & The City, Carrie has a Baies Diptyque candle in her bedroom. No, I am not obsessed.
Modern Alchemy candles come in coloured, etched glass jars in scents like Opium Den: “collapse in a languid, hazy cloud of resin, opiates and tobacco fumes” — & Boston Tea Party: “english black tea and cedar tangled in brackish seaweed”.
D.L. & Co. candles come in exquisite little vases — for example, the Foxglove candle comes in a turquoise frosted glass vessel in the shape of, you guessed it, a foxglove flower.
Vie Luxe candles are presented in a nickel-finished glass jar, & scents like Cote D’Azur sound incredible: “Vie Luxe’s Cote D’Azur candle is infused with scents of white lily, water hyacinth and white freesia with pink rose and french verbena”. Drool.
Archipelago Botanicals Monogram Collection has a different scent for every letter of the alphabet, but honestly, they all sound amazing so I doubt you’d be disappointed. The scent for ‘G’ is gardenia & jasmine. Yum. Too bad if your name is Xena or Zara, though — for some reason X & Z didn’t deserve candles of their own!
A Scent Of Scandal candles have great names (Back Seat Of My Car, Gold Digger, Starf*cker, Sugar Daddy) but I’m not overwhelmed by the scent descriptions. Seems kind of gimmicky to me, does anyone have more information?
Tocca candles have a long-standing reputation as one of the best in the world, along with Diptyque. I would love to have a sniff of Kyoto: “Tocca Kyoto candle is a delicate fruity-floral apricot-like aroma permeating from the Kinmokusei plant’s tiny gold-orange petals surrounding the ancient Buddhist temples of Japan’s cultural heart.” Doesn’t that sound magnificent? Wow.
Super-love & cupcakes,
Gala 
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“Too bad if your name is Xena or Zara, though — for some reason X & Z didn’t deserve candles of their own!”
Drink out of them, put flowers in them, serve tiny amount of dessert to your children (or others) in them. Toothpicks, hair-ties, contents-of-pockets overnight, spare change, pens, keys, makeup brushes, sticking plasters (again with the children), different-coloured sand (or shells or stones) from favourite beaches, a collection of tiny origami cranes . . .
That’s how I do it. (And none of my containers are candle-holders, either. Mostly vintage glasses, some jars, christening mug etc.)
ooooh you absolutely must venture into the L’Occitane in Melbourne Central, they have a cherry blossom theme going on and it’s just beautiful! They have floating cherry blossom candles in a six pack, it’s gorgeous :) I know they’re not in glass jars but this topic reminded me of them and I had to share :)
http://www.amazon.com/LOccitane-Blossom-Floating-Perfumed-Candles/dp/B000PHBAS4
Zara — Totally! I was, of course, thinking of you when I wrote that ;>
Nadine — Genius! Great ideas, thank you so much for your additions! After I wrote this article I rescued two candle jars from the rubbish & have set them up on my desk, one with business cards & another with eye drops/nail file/fortunes etc. They’re lovely, I’m so pleased.
Simone — Sounds dangerous! I was in M.C. today actually but forgot to go in there. I bought a whole lot of vanilla-scented candles from Bay Swiss, they were super-cheap & smell amazing…
T2 have tea scented candles, which are gorgeous. They come in a tall patterned glass, in flavours like Chai and Earl grey. They’re really yummy.
I read in a magazine once that the best way to clean them is to just stick them in the freezer, and the wax shrinks so it just falls out of the container.
‘blue wick’ is another beutiful candle brand. ooooh the smell is so lush . . .