It turns out it’s Autumn, folks. Yes, it’s time for clocks to go back, for the daylight to shorten, time to pull on our heavier coats and break out the thick socks and jumpers. As much as I’m much more a fan of summer and warm balmy weather, there is one thing I really love about the season. I can light candles. In the height of summer, it doesn’t get dark here until nearly 10:30pm but once Autumn comes, the days shorten and soon, I’m lighting them as soon as I’m home from work. As you can imagine, we get through a lot of candles during Autumn and Winter.

Now, you may know that every once in a while I like to mess around a bit with making my own STUFF. I’ve made my own soap, beauty products and most recently, a fragrance diffuser. Well, I decided to try my hand at making my own soy wax candles, fragranced with essential oils.

Dudes. Let me tell you something.

THIS IS SO EASY.

Seriously.

Ever wondered how to make soy wax candles with essential oils at home? Check out my super simple DIY!

There is something rather therapeutic about making your own products. And while there are few different ways to make candles (all following roughly the same idea), I like to take my time and engross myself in it, consider carefully the essential oil combinations I’m going to use, give myself a good few hours to mess around in the kitchen and really enjoy the fruits of my labour.

This one is Geranium and Lemongrass – the smell is divine, a lovely combination of floral and citrus.

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The two gold ones are Rosemary and Peppermint. An earthy herbal scent with a little bit of zing in the top notes.

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And finally, the last one is a truly Autumn scent – Cinnamon and Orange.

Want to learn how to make soy wax candles? Fill your home full of Autumn scents with this Cinnamon and Orange candle.

I love the glow when they are collected together but you want to make sure your fragrances mix well when you do this. They do emit a nice light scent but if you want a much stronger scent, then I would increase the volume of essential oils you use.

Love filling your home with candles? Find out how to make soy wax candles at home with my super simple DIY.

So the first thing I did was a little research and purchased a few things that I knew I would need for this project.

Here’s what you’re going to need:

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Containers: You can really use anything vaguely candle holder shaped in glass or ceramic – I used 2 gold spray-painted glass tumblers (in fact, that’s a DIY as well, found here), a small bowl from Anthropologie and a taller green glass candle holder I’ve had for a while. I’ve seen a lot of people use vintage teacups too which is also a rather nice look.

Soy wax flakes*: You can use paraffin wax for this as well but soy wax supposedly burns cleaner and longer and I like pure white candles which soy wax will give you instead of the creamy colour of paraffin. The other benefit is clean up – soy wax cleans pretty easily. I’ve used beeswax for other things (lip balm) and it is a total bitch to clean so while I don’t have experience of using paraffin, it may be similar in that sense. So soy wax works really well because candles can be pretty messy business.

Essential oils*:  Now, there are fragrances you can buy specifically for candle making. Apparently, they will give a stronger fragrance in soy wax than essential oils will. However, I do like using essential oils as they are organic and I feel better about having natural oils burning rather than some synthetic chemical smell. But that’s just me, again the choice is yours. (I prefer Tisserand as a brand if you are looking for a recommendation – the scents are really potent, organic and in certain cases, ethically harvested.)

Candle wicks*:  I purchased a set of candle wicks that come with the small metal bit on the bottom to make them easier to attach to the bottom of your candle. Do you need to have these? Not necessarily, it just makes your candle a little more professional. If you don’t want to spend the money on wicks with the attached metal bottom, you can just tie a knot on the bottom and set it like that. Again, up to you.

Glue dots*: I had mixed success with gluing my wicks to the bottom. I do know that using a hot glue gun doesn’t work because the hot wax will just heat up the glue rendering it useless. The glue dots seemed to work well in the more shallow containers but not so great in the taller ones. They aren’t expensive so I suppose it’s worth a try if you are using something like teacups but perhaps not if you want to make something much larger.

Ok, now that you have all your supplies, here’s how it’s done…

First attach your glue dot to the underside of the metal bit of your wick. I found it easiest to attach it here first and then just stick it down to the middle of the container, pressing it down with my finger (rather than attaching the glue to the bottom of the container first).  Once you have all your wicks attached, you just want to straighten the wicks so they stand straight and tall and upright. The location of your wick is important to ensure the candle burns evenly.

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Now, you want to measure out your wax flakes. The formula is very simple. Fill your container with the wax flakes to about an inch or so from the top of the container, dump it into your glass bowl and then do it again. The solid wax reduces to approximately half the volume once it’s melted. So to find out how much solid wax you’ll need, simply fill the container and then double it.

Find out how to fill your home with gorgeous scents and learn how to make soy wax candles.

I used a bain marie to melt my wax down. Now, there are tutorials online that tell you that you can melt it in a microwave. And yes, you can. But how your candle burns once it’s solid again is related very much to the temperature it is when you pour it into the container. And I don’t like the idea of not being able to control the temperature or ‘boiling’ the wax by accident in the microwave. Besides, making products like this is therapeutic to me… so watching the flakes slowly turn to liquid as you move it around in the bowl is rather nice. Maybe that’s just me but it feels a bit more ‘pure’ (is that the right word?) to melt it like that. Again, your choice.

Learn how to make your own soy wax candles with essential oils and fill your home with Autumnal scents.

The wax doesn’t take too long to reduce to fully reduce to liquid. Once all the wax is melted, remove the bowl from the bain marie (use oven gloves, the glass gets hot! Safety first, people.) and set it down to cool for a couple of minutes.

Once it’s cooled a bit (but still in it’s liquid state), you can add your essential oils.  The reason you don’t want to add them to the melted wax immediately is that the high heat will reduce the scent of your oils so letting the temperature drop slightly will ensure your candles smell lovely when they burn. I used about 50 drops for the smaller bowl container and 100 drops for the larger ones. The combinations I chose were: geranium and lemongrass (50% each pink bowl), cinnamon orange (green container) and rosemary and peppermint (60% rosemary to 40% peppermint) in the 2 gold ones. Again, they give off a lovely light scent but if you really want something more powerful, simply increase the amount of essential oils you use.

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Mix the essential oils well into the melted wax and then carefully pour into your container.

Find out how to scent candles with essential oils with my super simple soy wax candle DIY.

The wick stayed nice and upright in the shallow bowl but not as well in the taller containers so I used a couple of fragrance diffuser reeds to hold them in place because I had those to hand but you can use a pencil or a chopstick or whatever you need. It’s just to balance the wick while the wax dries.

Find out how to make your own soy wax candles at home with my super simple DIY.

Give the candles 24 hours to fully set and then you can light and enjoy them. And THAT’S IT.

One of my favourite things about Autumn is that it's totally acceptable to fill your home full of candles. Want to find out how to make soy wax candles at home? Check out my super simple DIY!

I am going to make a few this year for Christmas gifts! Is this a DIY you would try? I’d love to know if you’ve made your own as well and what fragrance combinations are your favourites so please do weigh in if this is something you’ve done yourself!

Swoon Worthy Scents

Update! After many years of making candles as a hobby, I’ve launched my own brand of luxury candles in 2021. Shop Swoon Worthy Scents here.


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