The history, use and value of candles – floating candles

Floating candles are easy to use and a lot of fun They come in scented and unscented versions, many sizes and a fantastic range of shapes and odours.

Here are a few ways to explore their value. Float a few in your pond or swimming pool to give evening parties a touch of elegance. If you don’t have a pond or pool, fill up the kiddies paddling pool and use that! Then there’s the bird bath, which can be decorated with candles both floating and around the edges (but clear up any spills or drips, as the birds may try to eat them next day). Any reasonably-sized body of water works for this effect – so cheap clear plastic bowls filled with water will look good placed around the garden with candles in.

You can also bring the two natural elements of water and fire into your home with floating candles. You can get cheap, shallow glass bowls in charity shops (for some reason cut-glass bowls were used as trinket dishes etc in almost every room of almost every house up until the 1960s) and fill them with water, rose petals and floating candles. By shopping around, you can often find the perfect floating candle to celebrate a holiday, such as a floating autumn leaf or snowflake. The possibilities are virtually endless.

The final advantage is the ease of cleaning up. If floating candles happen to drip into the water, then the wax will clump rather than stick and you can very easily empty it away with the water, meaning minimal clean-up time and effort.

Floating Candle photograph by MarkHillary, used under a creative commons attribution licence