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Hurricane Candle Shells As always, refer to the basic candle making safety procedure. You will need: Hurricane mold Insert High melt point wax (150° +) Silk flowers/dried fruit to embed Water bath (bucket and cold water) 1. Melt your hurricane wax with no additives to 190-200 degrees. While that is heating up, put your silk flowers, leaves, whatever in the space between the mold and the insert. 2. When you are happy with the flowers, prepare the water bath with water from the cold tap (faucet) 3. Pour the wax into the inside of the insert (which has no bottom) and it fills up the mold from the bottom up to the top. Most hurricane molds will take 4-5 pounds of wax to fill the mold completely. 4. Take your trusty wooden spoon and whack the sides to get out any bubbles and use a heat gun on the sides of the mold to help get rid of cold pour lines and bubbles if the mold was cold when you started pouring. 5. Carefully place the mold into in the water bath and make sure that the water level reaches the top of the mold or you will have ugly lines around your candle shell. You will see the sides start to harden almost immediately. Every couple of minutes after you see the sides start to get thick move the insert up and around to keep it from getting stuck in the wax that is getting solid on the bottom. 6. When the sides are pretty close to being as thick as you want them (Maybe 10 minutes or so) take the insert completely out of the mold. Let the wax sit for a few more minutes until it is as thick as you need it and take it out of the water bath and dump the inside wax back into the pot. TIPS FROM CAROLYN I need to warn you right now (oopps should have said this *before* you poured your wax back into the pot!) that some of the silk flowers will color the wax. I haven't found anything that will stop this. If you want white wax the next time, dump this wax into something else and start over. Let the mold sit at room temp until it is cool to the touch and then pop it into the refrigerator for abut 5 minutes or so and it comes right out. That's when the fun starts!!! It either looks great and you're pleased as a new parent or you have to figure out a way to find those flowers and stuff that you know are in that darn wax somewhere!! With this method you end up with a wax shell with a bottom that your votive cup or tealight will sit on. Another method you can use and one that I do alot is right after you dump the wax back into your pot, take a smaller insert or any kind of cutter and use it like you would a cookie cutter and cut down through the wax on the bottom. Make sure to go all the wax through the wax while it is still warm enough to hold that cutout but not so cold that you can't get all the way through. Then when the shell is cool enough and you take it out of the mold, you can poke this bottom part out and then you have a shell with an opening which can be lifted over your votive cup to make it easier to light the darn little thing! Most of the people who I have made these for just love the ease in using the shell when they can lift it off so I do most of mine like this. The main think I've learned about hurricanes is to have fun and if they don't come out right all you have to do is play with them a little bit and see what can be done to make it better. The worst you can do is make a mess of them and if that happens just throw the darn thing back in the pot, remelt the wax, pick the flowers out of the wax and use it to make another one. I do reuse my wax that has been colored by the flowers by using that color scheme in the next shell when I am picking the flowers and stuff that I am going to use. I also keep adding more wax to keep about 5 pounds of wax melted to fill the mold and this lightens the color. But after awhile you just have to start over with white again. I used to use this wax over and over when I was first trying to figure out how to do these darn things and got some very interesting colors that will never be duplicated. And funny enough, these were the first ones people bought because they weren't white! They liked the fact that they were colored shells because they hadn't seen any before! Oh well... The photograph below shows Carolyn using the hurricane shells to display silk flowers. Because the shells have a base, they are water tight and can be used in all number of inventive ways!! 
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