DIY Soy Candles with Essential Oils -

I have been loving burning candles while I work from home during this pandemic! They make me so happy and add a coziness to my space. But as my fellow candle lovers know, it can become expensive to keep buying candles. Especially when, like me, you want a new scent each month to match the seasons!

I also wanted to make sure I was only burning clean candles made from pure soy wax and preferably scented with essential oils. Then I realized that I had plenty of yummy smelling essential oils sitting around that I could make my own candles with!

While we stayed at home for the Thanksgiving long weekend this year, my mom and I decided to have a “DIY weekend” and make various Christmas decorations and gifts, including candles, pomanders, and my mom’s annual advent wreath. We tackled the candles yesterday and had a lot of fun doing it!

The process is super simple, but can be somewhat time consuming while you wait for the wax to reach the temperatures you want. It also depends how many different scents you want – the more scents you’re making, the longer the process will take since you can only do one at a time.

We made 5 scents – lemon, lavender, lavender & lemon, cinnamon & orange, and coffee. The process took about an hour per scent from measuring everything out, to melting the wax, letting it cool, adding the oils, and pouring the candles. So, I would plan for an hour per scent. If I were doing it over again, I may try to make bigger batches of a smaller number of scents (but I was too excited to try out all my different scents!).

The DIY candles are much cheaper than buying them too – I paid $35 for ingredients and made 3 large candles and 9 smaller ones. That being said, I already had the essential oils (which can be a more costly ingredient), tools, and just saved glass jars or used ones I already had. So, if you have to buy everything from scratch it will cost more, but I still think it’s cost effective!

These candles make great gifts and you can even add your own personalized labels! I plan to keep some for myself and give some to loved ones this Christmas.

The links in this post are affiliate links, which means that I will receive a small commission from your purchase at no extra cost to you. Thanks for your support!

Ingredients:

Soy wax
Cotton wicks
Essential oils – I used the scents: lavender, lemon, orange, cinnamon, and coffee in my candles
Popsicle sticks
Glass jars
Glue gun
Double boiler – I just used a glass measuring cup in a pot of boiling water
Candy thermometer

Instructions:

First, you’ll want to measure out your wax flakes. Fill up whatever jar(s) you’ll be pouring your candle(s) into to about an inch from the top, then double that amount! As the wax melts, any pockets of air that were between the flakes will disappear, so you need double the amount.

2. Pour the wax flakes into whatever you’re using as a double boiler. Set the temperature high, but watch it. You want to water the get hot, but if it boils and gets over the edge of your double boiler you’ll ruin that wax. Stir it occasionally while it melts.

3. While waiting for the wax to heat up, you can use your glue gun to glue the wicks to the bottoms of the jars. The wicks I linked above are anchored into little silver circles – just put a dot of glue on the circle and press it in the center of the bottom of the jar. You can use the popsicle sticks to help keep your wicks straight.

4. When the wax starts to turn to liquid, stick your candy thermometer into it. The one linked above has a handy clip so you can clip it to the side of you boiler.

5. Keep stirring the wax until it hits 180 degrees Fahrenheit.

6. When it reaches 180, take the wax off the heat and set it aside. Keep the candy thermometer in it.

7. Let the wax cool to 130 degrees Fahrenheit before adding your essential oils. If you do it before, the oils can burn off and you will have no scent. When it hits 130, pour in essential oils and STIR WELL. You don’t want the oils just sitting on top of the wax.