Let's Make Spooky Halloween Candles
This super-easy craft project will raise the bar for your Halloween setting. For our Cousin's annual Halloween visit we decided to carve out an hour to make our own craft project and we were all surprised with the end result.
Flickering lights. Dripping candle wax. Magical shimmer and shine. Let's get started with these step-by-step DIY instructions! đŻď¸đŻď¸đđŻď¸đŻď¸đŻď¸đŻď¸đťđŻď¸
Crafting Tips:
For the pool noodles: Don't worry about the pool noodle color - you'll be painting these with black spray paint. If you can find a black or dark color... score! 2-3 pool noodles will yield 12-15 candles, depending on the preferred size of your end product. The more candles you make the greater the impact!
For the candles: We are fans of this set of 12 flickering LED tealight candles that have a remote and an adjustable automatic on-off timer setting for worry-free enjoyment. You may get lucky and find black candles but around Halloween, they can be rare to come by so we purchased white tealights and painted them with some black spray paint, and voila!
Materials:
Protective Cloth/Covering - When Painting
LED Flickering Candles - One For Each Candle
Painters Tape - Optional If Not Painting
Knife - A Serrated Bread Knife Works Great Scissors
Black Spray Paint - We Used Rust-Oleum Semi Gloss Black Paint + Primer
2-3Â Â | Pool Noodles 1 | Glue Gun + Glue Sticks - We Used This Surebonder Dual Temp Glue Gun
Pair Of Gloves - To Protect Your Hands From The Hot Glue
What To Do: 1. Prep Your Candles Prepare your work surface to protect it from the spray paint. Using your painter's tape, cover to mask the flickering top part of the candles. Spray the tealights in short bursts, making sure not to drown them in pools of paint. Set the tealights aside and allow them to dry for a few hours.
2. Size Your Candles Using your knife cut the pool noodles to your desired height. You'll be surprised how easily they can be cut! We varied the height by 2-3 inches to create a bundled candle grouping shown above.
3. Shape Your Candle Unlike some of the online pictures of Halloween candles where the tealights were just placed on top of the pool noodles, we wanted ours to be flush with the top of the noodles to make the flickering lights look like they were an authentic part of the candle. To do so we placed the tealight on top of the pool noodle and carefully cut downward about 1 inch (the height of the tea light) in a circle. We then took our scissors and snipped 4-5 cuts around the cut circle toward the center of the pool noodle. You'll then be able to tear out the pool noodle foam to create the recess for your tealight!
4. Create The Candle Drips
To create candle clusters you can glue them together by running a line of melted glue along the side of one candle then pressing another candle to it for a few seconds until they adhere to one another. Pro Tip: Try your glue gun on a lower heat setting to prevent the foam pool noodles from melting. To create the dripping wax effect add a line of melted wax around the top of the pool noodle in a circle. Next, you can add vertical lines of wax up and down the candles. You don't need to be precise here and varying irregular lines of wax will make it look like real candle drips! You'll likely notice very thin melted wax threads from the gluing - we left these on because once painted black they resembled creepy spider webs.
5. Add The Finishing Touches
To transform your candle cluster into the finished piece spray paint the noodles to make them creepy black. Once dried you can insert your tealights into their recessed positions and turn them on.
6. Place Your Candles
Because of the recessed battery-operated tealights, your Halloween candles will be best suited for indoor or covered patio use to keep them away from the sprinklers or rainy days and nights. We couldn't resist placing ours in our graveyard for this photo to enjoy the awesome nighttime lighting effects.
Halloween Lover? I have more Halloween crafts and recipes here on the Home Style Austin Blog or on our hand-curated Halloween Pinterest Board! Enjoy them all and happy haunting! đđđ
Joe Paul Reider
Home Style Austin Founder
Austin RealtorÂŽ
Keller Williams Realty
Email: JoePaul@KW.com
Mobile: 512-222-3302
Web:Â JoePaulReider.KW.com