Hello Thursday readers.

As we get into the cooler weather, it becomes time once again, to use fire to warm and light our living places. Fireplaces. Lanterns. Candles. Oh my! You know how much of a fan I am of DIY tutorials that are easy to do in an afternoon that don’t require too much space – since both space and time are in short supply in my home. I also love tutorials that would work really well both for myself and for gifts, so when I came across this I was very excited!

Image from HelloHomeBody

Your materials are simple.  All you need are crayons (they can be leftover from a craft drawer, they don’t have to be new), some white candles – they can be pillar or taper, whatever size you like. If you don’t have enough crayons to make a batch of melted wax that is deep enough to dip (or roll your candles in on an angle) then you’ll also need a spare white candle to melt down into the wax. Just remember that this extra candle will make the colour softer and more pale. The last thing that you need is possibly the most important.  It’s a double boiler. If you don’t know what this is, they can be found at kitchen shops, antique shops, or they can be made with what you have on hand at home.  Basically, a double boiler is a pot that sits on another pot that holds boiling water so that what you are melting doesn’t touch direct heat. This means that whatever is inside isn’t going to burn and it will melt evenly. Martha Stewart’s tutorial actually suggests using a crock pot, which would make for super easy clean up. The Free People blog has a great tutorial for those of you who don’t have a double boiler as well as lots of cool pictures to show you the result, and there are plenty of resources on the internet to help you out.

From the FreePeople tutorial

Your process is simple:  All you need to do is to crush up the crayons you would like to use into a double boiler. Using a knife will break them down easier than using your hands, but be careful.

A makeshift double boiler, also from Free People. They used a can big enough to fit a pillar candle as well as to move it around to get the desired dip shape.

Try to also keep similar colours together, so even if you don’t have enough of a specific blue, you can add in other colours as since it’s going to melt, they will all become one glorious blue that will throw all other blues to shame. Or… you know. Use what you have rather than spending more money than you need to on something like this. Put your crayons into a double boiler and melt them down. They should melt pretty quickly. You don’t need a huge amount of wax but you need enough that if you tilt your double boiler pot on the side so that the wax is made deeper in the corner of the pot, that it will get as far up  your candle as you would like.  As I said, if you don’t have enough on hand, add some white wax from an old candle or from a new one that you’ve bought to bring the volume up.  You can even use paraffin wax, which you can find in the canning section of a grocery store.

Photo courtesy of Fraeulein Zebra’s blog.

Be very careful as you do the next step and please use heat resistant gloves if you’re using an improvised double boiler as it will be very hot, you need to dip the bottoms of your candles into the coloured wax.  You can do a few layers of the wax as you’d like, dipping 2 or 3 or 4 layers. Or even dipping less deep each dip so that it’s a more graduated and fading effect.  When you’re finished, hold the candle for a few seconds while the wax dries before putting it on a tray to dry fully. The wax will harden quickly so this should only take about 30 seconds.

Photo courtesy of Ehow.com

And that’s it! Easy right?  The only catch is that you can only do one colour at a time, so if you’re planning on multiple colours, you may have to do this in different stages, though you could get some very interesting effects with layering.

I hope you have some fun making beautiful light to add to yours or someone else’s home!

~Megan