DIY Homemade Candle Tutorial.

March for us is a busy time with birthdays and anniversaries on Richards side of the family. We have my FIL's birthday on the 15th, MIL's Birthday on the 29th, and their Anniversary on the 30th. This year we decided....and by we I mean Richard, his sister Kerry and myself....to make them gifts instead of buying them something. I've really been into the DIY stuff lately and since we are all pretty crafty we decided homemade gifts were the way to go.

For my FIL we decided we were going to make him coasters that had "The Green Man" seasons on them. Kerry was able to get the pictures depicting the four seasons and we put them on each one. I unfortunately forgot to take photos of us doing them so I might do a step by step tutorial on it later. I did take one photo of a finished coaster so here it is.

*Winter*

These are the other three pictures we used.

Spring-Summer-Fall 

 

They were super easy to make, but the only problem we came across was that the ink from the printer ran a little bit when we were putting the Modpodge on them. So you may want to let the ink dry longer.

He really likes them but has decided to not use them as coasters for his office. Instead he put them in shadowboxes and hung them up on the wall in his office.

We decided to do this gift again for their anniversary as well, but instead we used pictures of them throughout the years. From their wedding photo to baby pictures of Kerry and Richard, up to a family photo of all of us at the wedding. We made 10 of them and they really liked those ones as well. I think they are also putting them in shadow boxes or doing something decorative with them.

For my MIL's Birthday we decided to make homemade candles. I found a tutorial on Martha Stewart's website and thought it was a great idea for a present. So we all went out and bought some pretty bowls with a neat design. So now for the tutorial of how to make your very own candles.

Homemade Candle Tutorial

So first you will need a few supplies:

Nested pans

Partially burned candles or new candles

Tongs

New wicking

Fancy New Bowls

Wooden skewers or Chop Sticks

Step 1:

Using your Nested Pans put water in the bottom pan and bring to a boil. In the top pan place your candle and melt that sucker down. Once it melts take the old wick out and place it on a paper towel.

We ended up using the wicks that were in the old candle but you can buy new wicks at Michael's or any craft store you like. We also couldn't find our tongs so we used a fork. :S Ah well worked the same way.

Step 2:

 Cut a piece of wick to the cup's height plus 2 inches. Dip the wick into melted wax to coat them.  Lay your Chopstick on top of bowl or cup, and what we did is we wrapped some of the extra length of the wick around the chopstick to keep it upright.

Then once you have the wick secure, pour some of the melted wax into your cup. We poured a little in at the bottom and waited to make sure the wick wasn't moving and then poured the rest of the wax in. We left about an inch of space from the top when we poured the wax in.

Step 3:

We let this dry and harden and when we came back we noticed there was a bit of a dip in the middle of the candle.

:( Stupid Dip. But no worries this is suppose to happen.

All you do is pour some extra wax into the middle until the wax is about a 1/4 of an inch under the lip of the cup.

Here you can see what I mean about the chopsticks and the extra wick.

Give it about an hour to dry and you should have your homemade candle. Just cut a little bit of the wick off and BAM you are done!

Here are some of the other candles we made.

 I'm sure you can buy scented candles to melt, but my MIL suffers from migraines and we chose unscented candles so it wouldn't cause an attack. What we did buy was some Sage Oil and put just a couple of drops into the melted wax just to give a little something special. Not enough to be to strong though.

She opened them yesterday and really liked them, and put them on her coffee table to light later that night. :)  

I have a few antique teacups that I want to try this in. I've seen some pictures online with them and thought it was super cute, so that's my next project.

Well I hope this tutorial was helpful and you enjoyed it, and I hope everyone is having a great weekend. :)