I am a candle freak. I burn candles on a daily basis, and as a result I have many candles container ‘bodies’ left over. These glass containers as spacious and usually come with their signature extinguishing lid. I recently learned of a new easy trick to clean them, so I decided to use a few waxy empties as sundae topping containers. Easy right?
Cleaning the Jars
When left with a candle jar that will no longer burn (about ½ inch of wax remaining), simply place the jar in your freezer overnight. The wax will easily and cleaning crack out of the container. You can use a spoon or butter knife to carefully crack the frozen wax.
A little hot soapy water will get rid of any remaining sticker and wax residue. I spray painted my lids so everything would be matchy-matchy for my sundae bar. However, you could leave plain metal lids as is and use them in the bathroom to hold cotton balls and Q-tips!
I had three jars that I cleaned up as I felt that was the perfect matching set.
Here’s Where I Screwed Up
When cleaning the jars, some Bath & Body candles and other brands have metal wick bottoms that are glued to the bottom of the glass. It’s hit or miss, as I noticed some of their production locations do NOT glue them down so they come out with the cracked frozen wax.
The metal tabs are usually easy enough to remove, but sadly some are really stuck in there. When trying to remove a stubborn one with my brute force, I split a glass jar container open with my hand. No injury, but I was pretty irritated to say the least. Ok, well I had two left.
I filled both cute pink top glass containers candy – one with M&M’s and the other bright glossy gummy bears. As I was carrying a container to the table to set-up my photo, I slipped on an unseen trail of ‘water bowl drool’ left by my dog. I landed hard on the kitchen tile and watched my adorable jar take flight and shatter into a million pieces of glass embedded in gummy bears. Wah!
My husband told me I should take a picture of the mess. In retrospect, I should have because the little bears looked all blinged out with the glass embedded in their little bodies. However, I’m certain a laser beam shot from my eye as I yelled, “Absolutely, not!” So much for my cute jars! Stupid sundae bar! Sundaes are stupid! Did I mention this whole sundae bar concept was for my daughter’s birthday party? Oh, wow – sorry, kid.
Lesson Learned
Again, I burn candles endlessly. I will soon have another supply of jars ready to be cleaned out and converted into cute storage. However, as we’re dealing with glass, the tricky step is getting those darn metal wick bases out. I must also watch where I’m going when precious cargo is in hand!
Update
Here are few jars I repurposed to hold Easter Candy! I didn’t break ANY this time! Woo!
