DIY Essential Oil Holiday Candles + Printable Label!

Getting our place spiffed for the Holidays not only means putting up the tree and hanging stockings, but it also means making sure it smells like the Holidays too. There’s something about the clean, yet still festive scent of winter pine trees that I’d been craving as the weather turned cold. I kept meaning to pick up a winter pine essential oil candle (which of course I spaced), so finally I decided just to make one. A no-brainer of course!

I decided to go with soy wax this time (check out the beeswax tea lights from last year!) because A. the wax is white which I wanted for this candle, and B. it’s way easier to clean up in your kitchen than beeswax. Seriously. Way. Easier.

The candle’s scent is mostly pine needle with orange added for sweetness and Wyndmere’s Forest Retreat Blend added to give it depth and complexity. When picking out your essential oils, make sure to use pure essentials and not essential oils in a carrier oil. They’re a bit more expensive, but the scent is more potent and just all around a better quality. I’m using Wyndmere here, but Whole Foods also has a great organic blend too. I love the scent I ended up with, and have been burning it like crazy!

I made this one for us, but of course these candles would make great gifts for those hard to buy for people on our list this year! Here’s what you need:

Materials:

• Glass Tumbler. Mine is from a thrift shop.
• 3 Cups of soy wax flakes or double the volume of your candle vessel
• Lead free wicks
• Wood dowel
• Pine Needle, Orange and Forest Retreat Essential Oils
• Old sauce pan
• Larger pan for double boiler

Bring 2 inches of water in a saucepan to a simmer. Place soy wax flakes in a slightly smaller saucepan or glass bowl and place over the simmering water in the larger saucepan, creating a double boiler. Stir the flakes every few minutes until completely melted. Once melted, remove the wax from the heat, dip the wick’s metal clip in the wax and press to the bottom center of the glass candle vessel with a wood dowel. Once the wick is affixed, wrap the top portion of the wick around the wood dowel and rest the wood dowel on the opening of the vessel.

By this time, the wax should have had a few minutes to cool down, and is ready to accept the essential oils. If essential oils are added too soon, they’ll burn.

Add about 100 essential oil drops in total and give the wax a stir. My breakdown between the 3 oils was as follows:

• 65 Pine Needle Drops
• 25 Orange Drops
• 10-15 Forest Retreat Drops depending on your preference

Pour the scented wax into the vessel and allow to set for 24 hours in a relatively warm spot away from commotion to avoid cracking in the wax.

Once the wax is set, trim to 1/4″ with scissors, and add the printable label.

FOR THE LABEL:

Materials:

• Cover weight paper in white or off-white
• Printable PDF Candle Label
• Scissors
• Artist-tac Permanent Dry Adhesive
• Artist Knife
• Metal Ruler
• Self-healing Cutting Mat

Print out the PDF on coverweight paper and cut out the label with a 1/2″ border. Turn the label into a sticker by peeling back the Artist-tac cover sheet and placing the label face up on the sticky layer.

Lay the cover sheet over top of the label and use plastic credit card (such as a credit card) to burnish the label, pressing it down onto the sticky layer. Cut out the label with an artist knife and metal ruler and discard the top sheet. Peel off the backing of the label exposing the sticky layer that’s now affixed to the back of the label.

Attach horizontally to the candle and press firmly.

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