wax melts are so pretty, though no prizes for guessing my favourite colour based on the above photo, hehe.
a while back, quite a few friends on Instagram asked a good question on one of my wax melt videos: how do these work, and what happens to them after the initial conversion from solid to liquid form? our comment discussions sparked the idea to write a brief post about the process i use for my wax melts from start to finish.
for those new to the olfactory landscape, fragrance compounds usually cannot be applied on their own and generally require a carrier medium, whether in the form of oils (for perfume oils), alcohol (for perfume sprays) or wax (for use in home fragrances). there are different types of each carrier as well; wax can come in paraffin, soy, paraffin/soy blends or even beeswax.
the scented forms are sometimes called wax melts (which tend to be smaller) or tarts (which tend to be bigger), and are sometimes also marketed in cubes or blocks. these are essentially the same substance regardless of name and size, and ultimately the most important is to be able to roughly estimate the capacity of the melter so that any overly-large melts can be cut down beforehand, to prevent possible spills over the edge which can be a fire hazard (or danger to pets or small children).
with wax as a carrier medium, the basic premise is that applying heat to the wax converts it from solid to liquid to a vapour, which at the same time releases and carries the fragrance around in the area it's in. it's the same principle as with candles as well, though with a candle the liquid wax is brought to the flame and vapourised, while a wax melt can be used over an electric or other source of heat which does not necessarily involve fire.
given enough time (and heat), it is theoretically possible to render an entire wax melt from solid to liquid to vapour, though usually almost all the fragrance would have been released by that point. i personally find that the best marginal efficiency is achieved by removing the heat source once the fragrance is barely detectable from a distance of about a foot - in most cases, this occurs at about the six to seven hour mark, though it's possible that a more strongly-scented wax melt could last at least ten hours.
at this point, at least 90% of the fragrance would have been released, and the lower throw closer to the end makes it less efficient to spend energy on extracting the fragrance from the remaining wax. i would then let my melter cool to room temperature naturally, then pop it into the freezer (minus the remnants of the candle beneath!) to get a disc of mildly-scented wax out after that.
just for illustration purposes, i've picked out two discs of some wax i've recently melted, Galatea Cosmetics' Eldritch Elixir and Athame and Alchemy's Poison Apple after about six hours of burn. the remaining wax can technically be thrown away, though i love being able to save and reuse these as materials for letter-sealing and other crafty activities.
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this post features a product that i had purchased at regular price with my own money (Eldritch Elixir), and a product which i had received as a part of a review set that was included with my purchase (Poison Apple). i didn’t receive any incentives for writing this. i’m not affiliated with Galatea Cosmetics or Athame and Alchemy and as always, all opinions remain my own.
all information correct at time of publishing.
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