How-to: Pumpkin Spice Halloween Candles

These candles are not only pumpkin spice-scented, but they’re made with Halloween cookie cutters! That’s right, you can make candles with cookie cutters. And you can scent homemade candles with ridiculously popular seasonal spices too. The nice aspect of using food spices for candle making is how subtle its scent is. I tend to prefer to use essential oils to bottled candle scent products for the same reason. Using real spices is a great alternative for DIY candles.

Supplies

double boiler (or a tin can and a cooking pot)
soy wax flakes
candle dyes
pumpkin spice mix
candle wicks
stove
scissors
Halloween cookie cutters
waxed paper
old baking sheet
candle thermometer (optional)

Directions

Lay a sheet of waxed paper over the top of your baking sheet. Melt your soy wax flakes using a double boiler (or a clean tin can and a cooking pot). Stir into your wax a basic pumpkin spice flavor mix and your preferred candle dyes. Please note: it’s recommended that you add colors and scents to soy wax at 185 degrees F, and you don’t want your wax to get over 200 degrees F at all. When you’re working with powdered scents, stirring is important to ensure even distribution of the mix throughout your candles. FYI :)

If your candle wicks have metal bases, cut them off. You need to let your wax cool a bit before pouring your candles anyway, so this is a good time to do it.

Let your wax cool a bit before pouring, and when you go to pour your wax, make sure to press down on your cookie cutter, forming a seal at the bottom of it. If you don’t create this seal, the situation pictured below will happen. Also, if your wax is too hot, you’ll run into some issues. For one, it’ll be so thin that it pours all over the place, even if you think you’ve got a good seal. If you’ve never made a candle before, you should check out my candle making 101 video tutorial for some beginner tips.

Don’t feel bad if you mess up a candle. Above is literally happened when I poured my second candle, not internet fakery here. You’ll get better at this after you’ve made 1 or 2 of these candles (and maybe a couple of mistakes). That’s what I did! Also, if you mess up, you just fold up the soiled waxed paper and grab a new sheet.

So, you should pour your wax, holding the cookie cutter down firmly. Keep holding it down while you count to 100 so the wax begins to set, forming its own seal over the bottom of the cookie cutter.

Let your first layer set for about 10-15 minutes, then put a wick in place wherever you’d like in the cookie cutter, on top of the first layer of wax. I folded my wick into a staple shape as shown, placing it exactly in the middle of my pumpkin candle.

After making my first candle, I switched to simply folding my wicks into a V shape so that there wouldn’t be a weird tail sticking out one side of my candle that would need to be trimmed. The trick is measuring so that one leg of the V is as long as the height of the cookie cutter where you want the wick to run through the candle.

Next, pour another layer of wax over the wick and the first layer, filling the cookie cutter almost all the way to the top. Let the whole thing harden over night.

Peel the waxed paper from the back of your candles. To remove your candles from the cookie cutters, carefully twist the edges of the cutter in opposing directions to loosen the candle. Then, slide the candle out by applying even pressure to the candle.

Tune in later this week for how to take cookie cutter candles to the next level by making layered cookie cutter candles in many colors!