Coloring Your Own Advent Candles The Easy Way (Melted Crayons!)

I often have trouble finding pink and purple candles for our Advent wreath, or even if I do find them they’re very pricy. You can really save a lot of money coloring your own candles because I find white pillar candles at the Dollar Tree for $1, and often the colored pillar candles are $5 or more each. I like to use pillar candles for Advent because they last longer and drip less. That last short candle at the end of the season can get stressful! lol. I have used different methods over the years (which you can find on my Advent wreath resource page) for coloring our own pillar candles pink and purple for Advent, but this is my favorite way so far! You can create your own Advent candles by melting crayons over them with a hair dryer! 

Finding Advent candles is always a challenge for Catholics this time of year. Pink and purple aren’t typical Christmas colors, so they can be hard to hunt down. Sometimes they have the packs of taper candles, but they have trouble lasting the whole season. And ordering or finding pink and purple pillar candles can be very expensive! Even if you find some for $5 each, that’s still $20 worth of candles! That’s always a stretch for me this time of year, and there have been years past where we could absolutely not swing that.

So years ago I colored my own Advent candles by melting pink and purple crayons and “painting” the candles. It was a somewhat complicated process, but still totally worth it and it saves a LOT of money. And the candles come out beautiful.

But after making the crayon melted Saint-O-Lantern this year it occurred to me… drip candles using crayons and a hair dryer! Eureka!!!!

This is so easy and fun and you will save a ton of money doing it this way.

Supplied Needed To Make Crayon Dripped Candles:

  • Cheap-o White Pillar Candles (NOT taper candles. A reader did that once and sent pictures- it did not go well lol)
  • Pink and Purple crayons (I used 12 crayons total. For the purple I ranged from Violet, to Blue-Violet, Red-Violet, and some lighter colors. For Pink I used 2 shades of pink and also a peach)
  • A hair dryer
  • A “back splash” (I used paper plates)
  • Exacto blade (this makes removing crayon paper crazy fast and easy!)

Start by taking your pink and purple crayons, and peeling off the paper. You can cut the paper off with an exacto blade to make this process easier. Like… a LOT easier.

You have to tack the crayons to the top of the candles before you melt them so that they stay in place. You really can’t use hot glue for this because it melts the candles and/or crayons. So while I got away with it for the pumpkins, it’s not a good idea here.

So just glue the crayons to the top of the candles with white glue and allow it to dry.

For Advent candles, obviously, you’re going to want 3 purple candles, and 1 pink. I mean… rose. 😉

Before using the hair dryer, put the candles on something to catch the stray wax. It’s a pain to scrape melted wax off of… well, anything.

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When the glue is dry, melt them with your hair dryer and watch the dripping magic begin! It takes several minutes to get the crayons to start melting, but once they melt it goes quickly. It actually went faster on the candles for me than the pumpkin. Not sure why.

Set your hair dryer to the hottest heat setting, but the lowest blow setting. Otherwise the wax goes everywhere- it’s crazy lol. I actually had a reader tell me the hair dryer is better than a heat gun because the heat guns are too hot and it’s hard to control the crayon. I don’t know. I don’t have a heat gun, but the hair dryer really does work well.

Everyone kept asking if the candles also melted with the hair dryer. Nope! I didn’t have any trouble with that at all.

The reason why this idea is so genius is because crayons are made from wax so they melt like the rest of your candle. In my young 20’s I actually tried painting candles with acrylic paint, and it very nearly caused a house fire lol. NOT a good idea.

Try to get the crayons down the side of your candle more than on the top. The crayons burns a bit slower than the rest of the candle, so the wick can have a little trouble getting started with too much crayon on top.

If your candles have trouble getting started, just pour the extra crayon wax out of the middle of the candle as it starts to burn. Once it gets going, it’s fine.

This is a really fun process for people of all ages, and check out the striking results!

You can find all of my Advent wreath resources for families here 🙂
 

Find my other Advent and Christmas ideas here!

Comments

  1. Lacy, Thank you, this is brilliant! We made the dripped wax saint pumpkins for our religious ed All Hallows Eve party and they were a huge hit, if incredibly messy. (Dressing our young saints in trash bag aprons helped a lot. Also a good idea not to have multiple hair dryers on the same electric circuit…..). A question/idea: we have in the past decorated white candles with the sheets of colored wax that can be cut into shapes. The wax sheets we used came from Germany and were crazy expensive. Do you think there is any way to melt crayons into a sheet of wax that could be cut into shapes? Thanks again!

    • I’m willing to bet that wouldn’t work because the wax of crayons is not flexible. That sounds really cool though! You know those bendy wax sticks that kids can use to build stuff? I bet you could decorate candles with those. Maybe the Christ candle from the middle. Hmmm… might be in need of another blog post lol. Glad ya’ll enjoyed the pumpkins! We did too! I am loving the crayon melting thing, and these candles did not disappoint. Happy celebrating!

  2. Elizabeth Farrell says

    I love this idea! Where did you get your Advent wreath? Most of the ones I’ve found online only hold the thinner candles…

    • Mine came from a thrift store, but if you have pillar candles you actually don’t have to have an “Advent wreath” because the candles stand up on thier own. You can set them on a plate and decorate with whatever.

  3. Where did you get your candle holder? I have been wanting to make a diy wreath as well!

    • I actually found this years ago at a thrift store. I added the greenary and the sparkly stuff myself. The sparkly stuff I found at Michael’s and I actually added pink and purple, which is hard to see in the pictures, but I love it. I’m a sucker for anything with glitter lol. I’m also a big believer in non-flamable Advent wreaths as we almost burned our house down with our one made from pinecones in high school

  4. It’s so wonderful to see you back to blogging, Lacy! I’m loving it! <3

  5. Lacy, Your site is a blessing to our family! Thank you for sharing your ideas and making it easy to do. Peace!

  6. Oh I LOVE it