Once you have your wax melted and ready to pour, you have to pour it into something! Yes, you could do the old-style colonial method where you dip a string in ... wait 10 minutes for it to cool ... dip the string into the wax again so the pillar gets slightly more thick ... wait 10 minutes for it to cool ... and 8 hours later you have something resembling a pillar candle
Using a Candle Mold In modern days we have actual candle mold materials that can stand up to the temperature of hot wax, and it is much more quick!
The first step is to spray the inside with a mold release spray. This helps ensure that the candle does not stick in the mold. It can be really hard to "pull" a sticky candle out of a mold! In this case the mold is a simple cylindrical pillar. The top is open and there's a small hole on the bottom side. What you do is pull the wick through the hole and tie it to a stick across the top. You then take some of the hole-plugger gum - shown in sticks to the lower right of this photo - and stick it on the hole to keep the wax from coming out. It works quite nicely!
Once the wax is molten, you simply pour the wax into the mold, up to the top. Make sure you have some wax left over. You wait a few hours. As the wax cools, it shrinks down in a indent at the center. It almost looks like the center has caved in like quicksand. You then take your remaining wax, melted again, and pour it in to fill in that indent.
Alternatively you can do half the container in one color, then once that cools do half the container in another color for a striped effect. You could make as many stripes as you want, based on your patience!
Once the wax is thoroughly cooled you just take off the gum that was stuck on the bottom hole, so that the wick can now smoothly slide out of the hole. You invert the mold and out slides the candle!
