My husband and I don’t typically get into lavish Valentine’s Day gifts (for example, watching an iTunes-rented movie over takeout sushi from our favorite places is probably going to be the extent of it this year), but I like to make crafty Valentine’s Day projects for girlfriends and for school fundraisers. For example, I made hot cocoa mixes for a prom fundraiser sale a few years ago. I like to celebrate these occasions without breaking the bank, and was inspired to share my ideas after learning about Personal Capital. If you haven’t heard of them, you should look into their free tools to help with your finances.
This year, my craft of choice was homemade mug candles, which I originally did for a blogger GALentine exchange by Fitness and Feta, then extended for my teacher girl friends as a half Galentine’s Day / half “it’s February break!” gift.
Photo via Simply Gourmet in Southie
Mugs for my teacher friends. Parker’s on the gift tags as Cupid Me 🙂
Materials (mostly from Michael’s, where teachers get a discount. I linked to similar items below–none are affiliate links)
Mugs – we got some cute ones in the dollar section
Soy wax flakes (similar)
Wicks (similar)
Vanilla candle oil (similar)
Clothespins
Small pot from Goodwill for melting wax, though now I realize there are pouring pots for this
Old dish towels to do pouring on
Scissors
Process
My sister came over to hang out with me and Parker while we got to crafting. She’s made these candles before, so she had some tips and tricks. We set up the wicks in the mugs and used two clothespins to hold each wick in place. We melted soy wax flakes in the pot over low heat, then mixed in a few drops of the vanilla oil per pot. The pot held enough for 2-3 candles based on the mugs that I’d bought. We poured the wax into the mugs and repeated the process until all eight mugs were filled. After letting the wax cool overnight (recommended time is 12 hours), I cut the extra wicks off and they were ready for gifting.
