Over the past few weeks we showed you how to make ‘up-cycled’ 3 tiered cookie trays, cake balls, and this week we are making teacup candles. It’s way easier than you think…

Teacup candles are easy to make, don’t require any fancy supplies, and can be put together from candle scraps and old teacups you might find around the house or in second hand shops.

They only take about 30 minutes to make, they look great, and if you picked them up at some fancy handmade boutique they might cost you a pretty penny. I’ve seen them being sold for over 200Sek a piece! Mine cost between 10-35Sek each.

As I’ve said before, when making gifts for friends and family it’s important for me to have something that looks great, takes minimal time and effort and does not require expensive supplies & multiple trips to the craft store. So yes, what I’m saying is although I like making gifts, I’m a bit of a…well… lazy gift maker. If a project takes more than a few hours during one afternoon, well I’m just not interested. That’s why when I saw how easy it was to make ‘teacup candles’, I was hooked on the idea.

I personally, went to the local thrift shop, picked-up a collection of vintage teacups ranging from 5-30Sek each, and used a combination of old candles sitting around the house and a candle making kit that I picked up from a local hobby shop.

The outcome:

Within a 30 minutes I had created a fun handmade Christmas gift that I know my sambo’s family will love.
Cost: 350 Sek for 8 ‘tea cup candles’
Time: about 30 minutes

Supplies needed:

- 1 candle making kit (wax + wicks) 80Sek
OR
- 1 package of wicks (15Sek) and
- random candle bits cut into small pieces

AND
- tea cups
- tape
- pencils / pens / sticks or something long enough to sit across the top of a teacup
- double boiler or a pot and some sort of bowl you can melt the candle wax in

STEP 1: Set your wicks in the tea cups

Hot glue, tape or use a few drops of hot wax to set your wicks to the bottom of the cups. Then wrap the rest of the wick around a pencil or pen and tape it in place. This helps keep the wick centered when pouring in the wax.

STEP 2: Melt you wax

I think it’s best if you have a double boiler to melt your wax, but since I did not have one I made my own handmade one.
I put a few inches of water in a veggie steamer and set it on medium.
Then I put my wax into  a stainless steal pot that I placed in the veggie steamer.
I waited until the wax melted and has warmed to about 82 degrees Celsius.

STEP 3: Pour the wax -Before pouring the wax, give it a few minutes to cool. Ideally you should pour it when it is around 50 degrees Celsius degrees.

- Pour the wax into the tea cups keeping the wick centered.

STEP 4: Let them harden

Once you have poured the wax, make sure you let them sit for at least 5 hours undisturbed.

ENJOY!!!!