Getting started as a candle maker
Set up your candle workspace, stock your wax and fragrance pantry, build your first recipe with Ellie, and log a burn test — the whole loop, start to finish.
Candle making is fully supported in Hi Ellie. If you already know your way around the resin side, most of it will feel familiar — the same pantry, the same wizard, the same Ellie — just tuned for wax, wicks, and fragrance. This guide walks the whole loop.
Switching to your candle workspace
Your studio can hold more than one craft. At the top of the app there's a row of craft tabs — a Dashboard tab plus one per craft you make in. Tap Candle to make it active.
Once Candle is active, everything craft-specific follows it: your recipe library, the pantry categories, and the wizard all switch to candle. If you don't see a Candle tab yet, add candle as a craft during onboarding or from your studio setup.
Tip: the craft tabs switch crafts within one studio. If you belong to more than one separate studio, that's the workspace switcher — a different control. See Finding your way around.
Stock your pantry
Ellie can only build with what you actually have, so the pantry comes first. A candle pantry has four shelves:
- Waxes — your soy, coconut, paraffin, or blends, with pour and melt temperatures.
- Wicks — your wick series and sizes (CD, ECO, HTP, wooden, and so on).
- Fragrance Oils — your scents, each with its flash point and supplier max load for candles.
- Vessels — your jars and tins, with their fill volume.
Add items by hand, from a spreadsheet, or by snapping a label. See Your candle pantry for the details on each shelf and why the flash point and max load matter.
Build your first recipe with Ellie
With a wax and at least one fragrance on the shelf, you're ready. Open the Ellie Wizard and describe what you want — a scent direction, a vessel, a mood — and Ellie builds a candle recipe grounded in your pantry: a wax, a fragrance blend, a load percentage, a wick recommendation, and pour and add temperatures.
Fragrance load is always a percentage of the wax weight, and Ellie keeps it within your fragrance's supplier max. See Making a candle recipe with Ellie for the full walkthrough, including how she picks a safe pour temperature relative to your fragrance's flash point.
Pour a batch, then test it
When you're ready to make a recipe, start a batch from the recipe. Batches are the candle version of a pour session — Ellie logs what you used and walks the steps.
A fresh candle almost always smells weak, so cure before you judge it — usually one to two weeks for soy and coconut. Once it's cured, run a burn test: light it, watch how it burns, and record what you see. Ellie reads your notes and tells you whether the wick passed or whether to size up or down. See Logging a burn test.
Heads up: trim your wick to about 1/4 inch before every burn, and let the first burn reach a full, even melt pool all the way to the glass. A short first burn is what starts tunneling — and it compounds on every burn after.