I have been making candles for a while now and I began to wonder if you can make candles without wax, so I thought I would go off once more and see what I could find out.
How Do You Make a Candle Without Wax? You need to have a fuel source, a combustible wick, and oxygen.
- Fill half an orange peel with oil and light the pith
- Punch a hole in a tuna can (with oil) and add string
- Roll butter into a candle shape around a piece of string
- Fill a jam jar with olive oil and add string through the punched hole
- Melt crayons in a microwave and pour them into a jar with string
How do you make easy homemade candles? Well, there are a few ways you can make a candle in the event of a power outage or when you have run out of regular candles.
Making Candles Without Wax Using Alternative Ingredients
Orange Peel Candle:
This one is by far the nicest for me as I get to eat the leftover ingredients which in this case happens to be the orange!
Cut into the peel of the orange and run the knife carefully around the edge until you have made a cut that runs around the entire orange. Make sure the dent where it was attached to the tree is on the bottom. Don’t cut too deeply into the orange. You want to remove the peel carefully trying to keep each half of the peel intact.
Using your thumb or a spoon gently work the peel away from the orange. Working around the edge of the cut you made, ease the peel gently and evenly as you turn the orange. When you have managed to get about two-thirds of the way down, gently pull the peel away from the orange, if it feels like it may split stop and rotate the orange and try from another part until the peel comes away from the fruit.
If you were patient and careful you will now have half an orange peel with a bit of pith (the white inside skin) poking up from the bottom. This will be your wick. Get some vegetable, olive, or coconut oil and fill the orange peel. Pour the oil onto the wick and make sure you do not cover the wick completely, leave a small amount sticking up above the oil as you will need to light this.
If the wick breaks off you can use a couple of fruit segments from the orange as wedges to keep the wick in place.
You are not limited to oranges either, both grapefruits and satsumas can be used too.
Light your new candle and enjoy!
Can of Tuna in Oil Candle:
This one sounds like it could be awful and quite smelly but it’s surprisingly odor-free.
Get a can of tuna from your cupboard and a screwdriver. It’s better if you use a small Phillips head screwdriver for this ( the one that looks like a cross, not the flat one) as the hole will be small and round. Place the can on a flat stable surface and carefully push the screwdriver into the top of the can to make a small hole. Be careful not to push too hard or you will make a hole in the bottom, which you do NOT want.
Get a small length of string and with the help of the screwdriver push the string into the hole you just made. Push enough string into the can to match the height of the can and about 1/4 inch more.
You need the extra string coated in the oil as you will gently pull that 1/4 inch of oil-soaked string back out. Cut the string leaving the 1/4 inch poking out of the can and then light it.
You can actually eat the tuna afterward too as you are just burning the oil in the can. I recommend you do not leave the tuna for too long after you have made a hole in the can, it would be best to eat it after using it as a candle. Also, wash the screwdriver thoroughly too as it will be going into the can.
Butter Candle:
Get some butter from the fridge and cut a small rectangle off the end of the block. Try not to make the block of butter too short and fat as you want to keep as much of the butter near the flame as it will be your fuel source. Using a skewer or screwdriver, while the butter is still cold, hard, and easy to work with, poke a hole into the top of the butter all the way to the bottom. Get a piece of string and push it into the hole and leave about a 1/4 inch at the top. Trim if needed. Rub the end of the string onto the top of your butter candle as you will need some initial fuel when you come to light it. As butter can get quite hot and messy a small plate or saucer is recommended.
Light and enjoy!
Olive Oil Candle:
As well as olive oil you will need a small glass jar or glass. A jam or sauce jar would be ideal for this as they usually have metal lids. Get your empty jar and screw on the lid. Then you need a screwdriver to poke a hole into the lid. A small Phillips head screwdriver is best. Get some string and poke it through the hole in the top of the jar leaving enough to reach the bottom of the jar plus an extra inch.
Fill the jar with olive oil and screw on the lid. Swirl the jar to make sure the string is coated with the oil and then gently pull 1 inch of the string back out of the hole until the oil-soaked part is above the lid, trim the extra string, and then you are ready to light your oil candle.
If you have a small jar or glass with no lid you can use cooking foil. Cut a piece about 4 times bigger than you need and fold it in half twice until you have the size you need. The extra thickness will help keep things in place. Make a small hole in the center of the foil with a skewer or knife. Don’t use a big knife or press too hard as you need the hole to be small. Carefully push the string through in the same way you did with the metal lid. Once you have the string in place and the end poking out coated with oil then you can mold the edges of the foil around the jar to keep the wick in place.
Things to Consider When Using Edible Ingredients
When you are using edible household objects to make candles such as oil or butter. Think very carefully about how you have used them before considering eating them after. The tuna should be ok as you have only pushed a small piece of string into the can which sucked the oil out of the can as the end was burning. This is the same for the oil candle. The butter however should be thrown away as it was exposed directly to the burning string and as such may have absorbed some chemicals from the string. If in doubt just throw the food away. It’s not worth the risk.
The other issue you may come across when using edible food products is that it may attract some unwelcome hungry pests too, especially when you have finished using your makeshift candle. I recommend that when you have finished using your candle you clean up the area and throw away the remains not leaving anything to entice any unwelcome guests.
Related Questions
Can you use a toothpick as a wick? Yes, if your candle wick has burnt down too quickly then you can push a toothpick down beside the wick and you can use this as a more robust wick. This will help when your candles are quite wide and your wick is short.
Can I use wood instead of string to make a candle? You can but really only very porous woods like balsa are suitable for this purpose. This is because balsa has good absorption properties and is a slower-burning fuel source when used as a wick compared to string.
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