How To Make Soy Wax Candles With Essential Oils

If you love making homemade gifts or just want to get crafty during an afternoon, you've come to the right place! I'm going to show you how to make soy wax candles scented with essential oils. I've partnered with NOW® Essential Oils to show you.

My best friend loves to leave little gifts for her house guests when they come to visit. She told me that she'd been ordering small, Florida-themed candles and soaps from a company at an exorbitant price. I told her we should make them instead! That way they'd be more personal, she could customize the scents, and hopefully, they'd cost less than she was paying. I did a little research and realized that it wouldn't be too difficult to make soy wax candles and that I already had the perfect products to add the scents of her choice: my NOW® essential oils.

So, why use soy wax instead of paraffin or other types of wax? Well, soy wax is derived from soybeans. It's natural and non-toxic. Soy wax also burns cleaner than paraffin wax, which is petroleum based. Once I had that part decided, it was time to gather supplies!

Ingredients needed for making soy wax candles

Here's what you'll need to get started making soy wax candles:

• Soy wax
• Candle wicks (these wicks are good for 3" diameter soy candles, you'd need different wicks for larger jars)
• Measuring cups
• Mixing bowl (microwaveable)
• Thermometer
• Clothespins
• NOW Essential Oils (we used Vanilla and Lime to make "Key Lime Candles)
• Jars (in the size of your choice, we used these 4-ounce jars)

How to make soy wax candles

The first thing you'll need to do is to melt your soy wax. I filled a measuring cup with 16 ounces (2 cups; measuring fluid ounces, not weight) of wax in order to make two 4-ounce candles. I found that you need approximately double the amount of wax flakes to convert to liquid. For example, if you were making one 8-ounce mason jar soy wax candle, you'd need to melt 16 ounces of flakes. If you were making a 4-ounce candle, you'd need to melt 8 ounces of wax flakes.

Heat your soy wax in a microwaveable bowl until it reaches 185 degrees F. This took about 5 minutes in our microwave. We then let the wax cool a bit and added the fragrance when the wax temperature was 160 degrees F.

For our candles, we decided to make them "Key Lime" scented since we live in Florida and it would be a nice little reminder of their trip. We used NOW Lime Oil and NOW Vanilla Oil.

As I mentioned in my other posts, where I profess my love for NOW Essential Oils, I love that the fact they are stringently tested for purity. And, since NOW has long-standing relations with their essential oil vendors and they purchase oils in large quantities that qualify for bulk discounts. Then, they then pass those savings onto consumers in the form of everyday low pricing. In fact, if you compare NOW essential oils to other brands, you'll see that NOW oils are sometimes a fraction of the price as other well-known brands that use multi-level marketing.

We used about 30 drops of Lime Oil and 30 drops of Vanilla Oil for each candle. You can use more or less, depending on the strength of the scent you're looking for. We started at 15 drops of each and eventually kept adding 5 drops at a time until we found our desired effect.

Once your wax has cooled a bit (around 100 degrees F), you can add it to your jars. You'll want to add your wick first. Add a small amount of melted wax to the bottom of the jar and then place your wick right in the center (unless you're doing a jar with a larger diameter and are adding more than one wick).

When you add the wick, you'll need something to keep it standing in the center of the jar while you pour the wax in. This is where your clothespin comes into play. Thread the wick through the hole in the mechanism of the clothespin and then slowly pour the wax into the jars.

Let your soy wax candles set up overnight before moving them around too much or trimming the wick. Then, let them cure for 7 days before burning.

If you're looking for more info about how to use essential oils in your home, check out my all-purpose cleaner recipe, my post-workout body spray, my peppermint sugar scrub, and my homemade mosquito repellant.

Caution: NOW® Solutions Essential Oils are very concentrated and can be irritating to the skin. Avoid direct contact with skin and always dilute essential oils before topical use.