Beeswax candles have some pretty amazing properties – did you know they clean the air as they burn? They also smell amazing and best of all, are easy to make at home! Round about this time every year I make a pot of tea, dust off the record player and spend an evening making a big old batch of these DIY candles to see us through winter. There’s no hot wax involved so you can even do it with one eye on the TV! They’re easy to make at home and I’m going to show you how in today’s tutorial…

You will need…

Craft knife (if you have an old blunt one then use it for this as it’s going to get gunky)

Metal ruler

Cutting mat

Wick

Beeswax candle sheets

(You’ll find plenty of options for the wick and candle sheets online!)

Step 1: Place your wax sheet on the cutting mat in front of you, landscape-wise. Using the craft knife, mark one inch in from the side on one of the short edges.

Step 2: Line your ruler up with the mark you just made and the bottom corner of that long edge and cut. You’re going to shave off a thin wedge of wax like in the picture above.

Step 3: Now you have a sheet of wax with one long, straight side and one long, slanted side. Place it on the cutting mat with the slanted side to the left – out of the two short sides you should have the slightly longer one nearest to you. Cut a length of wick around 1 inch longer than that edge of the wax. Line the end of the wick up with the edge of the long straight side and carefully begin pinching and rolling the wax around the wick, working your way to the other end.

Step 4: Continue to carefully roll the wax around the wick a couple more times, working from one end to the other. Once the tube of wax is around 1/2 inch wide use both hands and, pressing gently downwards, roll the candle up! You’ll want to keep an eye on the right hand side of the wax sheet to make sure it stays in line as this will be the bottom of the candle. The top of the candle will be made from the slanted edge of the wax and will have a nice taper thanks to that little bit of wax we trimmed away at the beginning!

Step 5: Once you’ve rolled your candle all the way up you can go back and forth over that last join a few times just to make sure it’s really sealed – I like to carefully press down on the outside edge along the length of the candle to make sure it’s nice and firm.

I used to save candles for special occasions but now I use them every day – life’s just too short not to feel cosy at every opportunity. It really makes the evenings feel special which is important after a day at work (or at the coal face of child rearing). I like to dot them around the living room in clear glass candle sticks which I pick up in charity shops for a couple of pounds here and there – the different shapes and sizes look great together!

One tip for fellow glass candle stick lovers: Snuff the candle out before it burns right the way down or the heat could crack the glass. It took me a little while to work that out, hence why I’m down to my last three…