“Creativeworld is a firm fixture in my calendar – it’s a wonderful place to find inspiration”, says Lena Bruns, who works in Marketing Communication and Media Relations. Lena makes elaborately designed candles, each of which is like a work of art in itself. Such as her Speculo Choco Delight candle, for example, for which she pours wax into a glass jar and then decorates it with an incredibly realistic looking traditional German Christmas cookie, a crunch topping and little chocolate chips. And the icing on the cake – so to speak – is the matching scent, which Lena mixes into the candle wax. Each of her designs is one of a kind and takes around two to three hours to make.
The idea to start making candles came purely by chance. When Lena visited her parents in winter 2021/22, she found some candle remnants from old Advent wreaths. On the spur of the moment, she gathered a few empty tin cans and melted her first wax in them, before pouring it into an array of different containers. But it only really took off around one year later when she brought everything she needed back home to Frankfurt and began working on her own candle designs.
“Most of what I learnt about candle-making came from social media”, says Lena. It was there that she found no end of accounts by creative candle makers. She also finds inspiration for ideas when she’s out and about in the city. Lena uses silicone to make the moulds for her candles herself – such as the one for the cookie or the original-sized gummy bears she uses in her Candy Bomb candle. These moulds can be used to recreate even the smallest details.
These days, Lena uses a proper wax-melting pot instead of tin cans placed in hot water. When making candles, it is vital to have the right temperature, for example to avoid sinkholes – i.e. hidden cavities that can form within the candle, often right next to the wick. “There’s a sweet spot at which the consistency of the wax is just right”, she explains. “If you wait 30 seconds too long, the wax will harden and you can’t really work with it any more.” This is why making the ‘cream’ topping for her cookie candle turned out to be a real challenge for Lena.
Making the candles often requires extra creativity on Lena’s part: for the ‘cream’ on top of her SpeculoChoco candle, she used a piping bag to achieve the perfect result. Even with this tool at her disposal, creating the cream still proved to be a real challenge that required the utmost patience.
Her most recent purchase is a label-maker that can be connected to an app to create and print her own label designs for the candles. Lena gives most of her one-of-a-kind creations their own names, such as ‘Speculo Choco Delight – Dessert Scented Candle’ for her cookie candle.
Lena has produced around 30 jar candles so far – either for herself or as gifts for friends and family. She manages to find the time to make them around once a month and has also thought about selling them at Christmas markets.
An introduction to candle-making can be found at Creativeworld – for example, Danish manufacturer Creativ Company offers candle-making sets at its stand.
Information
If you’re also interested in handiwork and textile design, you can visit the product area of the same name in Hall 1 at Creativeworld from 6 to 9 February 2026. The other areas of the international trade fair for the hobby, craft and artists’ supplies industry, which also has a wide range of accompanying events, are Graphic & Artists’ Supplies, Hobby & Handicrafts and Graffiti & Street Art.