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My children took off with my camera and it’s nowhere to be found but I snapped one of the candle with my husband’s cell phone.

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I love the leaf applique candles which you could duplicate yourself by using a leaf shaped cookie cutter on a thin sheet of wax.

Another easy and attractive way to add some fall flair to a candle is to simply embed a real colorful leaf on the outside of a pillar. To do this you would press the leaf onto your pillar with a little melted wax. Then overdip it once or twice in clear wax to seal it.

Fall leaves photo credit:Crystal Woroniuk

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I just shaped some white sculpey clay with my hands and used a pencil, screwdriver and stick to create the face since i don’t have any fancy clay tools.

Then I cooked it for a half hour, let it cool and coated with red acrylic paint. After the candle holder dried, I added a little detail with some yellow paint.

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It turned out perfect and it was so easy to just peel off once the wax set. I used a combo of leftover palm and soy wax. It’s a great way to recycle those tubes too.

Supplies needed for toilet paper roll pillar candle:

* Tin Foil, Tape, Wax, Pretabbed Wick, Toilet paper tube, newspaper or wax paper (to catch spills).

Wrap the tin foil around the bottom first and then use the duck tape to secure it firmly on all sides. Other tape would probably work but I like duck tape.

Insert a pretabbed medium wick, heat your wax and pour. Straighten out the wick if necessary and/or use a small stick or dowel to hold it in place.

Very fun and easy so I’m collecting more. That won’t be hard with this gang.

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It’s one of the most detailed and informative books I have read on candle making.  He’s a well known candle maker and has been at it since 1971.

The only drawback to the book is that it doesn’t have much information on vegetable waxes. You can find out more about him and read some of his free updated articles at One Stop Candle.

To make the sand candle you can either press your hand or an object into the wet sand to make a shape for the mold.

For this one I just pressed the bottom of a large vase into the wet sand. I wanted a wide one and had some extra wax to use.

For sand candles you need to heat the wax a little hotter than usual before you pour it. I used two wicks so it would burn better. It was easy straightening out the wicks since they had paper cores and tabs to hold them down.

I added the seashells around the edge after pouring the wax and it was ready to come out in about four hours. Before pouring I added a coconut scent since I thought it would match with a seashell/beach theme.  Next time I would like to make a more interesting shape but it was fun.

If you want to see it in action, check out David Constable’s video demonstration on how to make a sand candle.

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It was made by rolling sculpey clay and cutting the heart shapes with cookie cutters. Just bake for 30 minutes at 250 F after placing them into position on a glass holder. It’s a great way to jazz up and personalize a plain candle holder.

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To make the pillar I simply cut a purple beeswax sheet in half lengthwise and wrapped it tightly around a #1 cotton wick.

Then I wrapped the second half around again to thicken it.  I pressed a metal heart cookie cutter into a blue beeswax sheet a couple times firmly until two blue hearts were formed and popped out.

The blue hearts I used to decorate the beeswax pillar by simply pressing them onto the candle. Since I didn’t want to waste the remaining blue wax with the cut out heart shapes I decorated a palm wax pillar pictured here.

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We made some fire starter candles from dryer lint and wax. This is a great way to recycle egg cartons and dryer lint and it’s more effective than newspaper alone since it doesn’t burn out as quickly.

Our last night at the campsite there was a huge rainstorm but I was able to light a fire easily with a fire starter candle. We brought a few things to cook on the fire so it was important to have one. For a video demonstration on how to make fire starter candles see Homemade Fire Starter Tutorial.

In an emergency you could also use a buddy burner which is a mini stove you make out of a tin can, cardboard, wax and a wick. See buddy burner instructions for more.

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Of course my kids took off with my tape measure so this wasn’t precise but it was fun. First you cut a sheet in half lengthwise and roll it around a cotton wick.

Next, cut the remaining half in half again the opposite way and roll the two pieces up without a wick to make the first stripes.

Continue cutting the other sheets until you have seven stripes in total to cover your small pillar. Beeswax is sticky so it doesn’t take much to stick the sheets together. If they’re not soft enough, warm them up a bit with a blow dryer.

I got this idea from a wonderful project book called Beeswax & Wicks by Jackie Stephens & Linda Lloyd. They used four sheets with smaller stripes. It’s a very nice effect but I only had three.

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