Make Tealights with your own Vacuformed Mold!

You know that you can make your own tealight holders – all you need it the proper Forstner bit. But this time we go a step further and actually make tealights! The technique I used to make the mold – vacuforming – can be used for many other shapes, too, and you can use it for much more than just candle making. Please share the joy of tealights, enjoy it for yourself, and remember to be Inspired!

Considerations for Vacuforming

There are a number of interesting shapes that can be made using this technique. When you make tealights, you can easily go beyond what is considered normal when it comes to fitting into a tealight holder by casting something with a tealight base but extending it up a bit.

But this is where we run into our first problem that is inherent to vacuforming. You cannot have undercuts because they will prevent you from removing the candle. Actually, they will prevent you from unforming the initial mold in the first place.

So while this kind of extended tealight might seem like a good idea, it is not easily feasible. Instead, you could turn to different geometric bodies with these molds. From half domes to larger cylinders to pyramids and cones, you can make a large number of shapes, as long as the form is not too deep – stretching the plastic too much – and does not have undercuts.

Another way to make more elaborate shapes is to combine them. You can easily make a tealight, then add a small pyramid to the top – if you cast them in two steps and gently melt them together. This way, you can also make spherical candles by combining two domes. You should flatten one side, though, to make sure it does not roll away.

Come to think of it, melting two half spheres together would make it easy to insert the wick – just place it between the halves and set it up so that the meeting face sits vertically.

I hope this project helped you to alleviate your tealight needs and to get into the interesting technique that is vacuforming. If you want more tealight holders to check out the aptly named category “Tealight Holders”, and as always, remember to be Inspired!