Monday, June 30, 2014

Jelly Jar Citronella Candles


I have been saving Smucker's Orchard's Finest jelly jars {and a few other "cute" jars} for a while to make homemade candles. This month I finally got around to it.

I touched on this project a little in my post about Craft Night, but I wanted to write something more detailed & entirely devoted to the candles. {Detailed... sort of ironic, because making these was anything but!}

You need just a few things to accomplish this:
  • melting wax
  • citronella essential oil
  • wicks
  • jars/containers
I bought soy wax shavings from Pat Catan's craft store for $20. The good news to me was the wax is microwaveable. I was dreading buying/using a double boiler. I'm sure it gets the job done just fine. But for whatever reason I had a mental block against it. I hot glued the wicks into my jars. {Regular and wood for fun!} Then microwaved my wax in a liquid measure. I added the drops of citronella oil after the wax came out of the microwave. I thought maybe the wax would try to harden right away, but it stayed liquid-y for a while. In fact, after pouring it into my jars, it took a full 24 hours to totally harden. Voila! Done! I made 6 candles and had plenty of wax chips leftover.


So there you go. A fast, fun project - cheaper than store-bought and in my opinion a lot cuter. I chose to leave my wax it's natural color, but it would also be fun to experiment with different colors.

Thanks for checking in at Operation: Old Elm!
Keep creating!

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