Christmas is a great time for making custom, personalized gifts for friends and family. This year I decided to make Christmas wax melts for the first time and can't wait for you to see the results!

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While I'm a huge fan of traditional scented candles, sometimes it's just easier not to have to worry about a flame. Electric wax melt warmers can fill that void, providing the aromatherapy benefits of scented candles without the worries of fire safety. And they've become so popular that there are tons of styles of electric wax melt warmers out there to choose from -- including Christmas-themed ones that would be perfect for gift-giving as well:      

• Christmas Gingerbread House Wax Melt Warmer
• Holiday Collection Tannebaum Tree Wax Melter
• Christmas Holiday Collection Christmas Books Wax Warmer
• Santa's Sleigh Wax Melter  
• Christmas Ornament Wax Melter  
• Holiday Fireplace Fragrance Warmer
• Nativity Scene Jar Candle Warmer

While you can always create your wax melts with new blocks of wax and bottles of scented oil from the craft store, I prefer to go the easier (and cheaper) route: using left over scented candle wax -- you know, that wax at the bottom of the jar that has just seen better days. Instead of throwing it out, why not reuse it?  

First you must get the left over wax out of whatever vessel it's sitting in -- usually a jar -- either glass or ceramic. For both types of vessels you can place them in an inch or two of boiling water which will quickly melt the wax just enough so that you can pretty much slide it out in pieces (if not in one whole piece). I boil the water in my electric tea kettle and then pour it into a bowl after which I place the candle into the bowl and let it sit for a few minutes.

NOTE: Don't ever place a candle in the microwave as their wicks are secured in the jar by metal disks.  

Once you've removed the softened left over wax pieces from their jars (which you can now reuse as well!) you're ready to re-melt them and fill your Christmas wax melt molds with your remelted wax.

 

 

WHAT KINDS OF MOLDS CAN I USE?

 I got this adorable Christmas silicone mold at Hobby Lobby for $1.75 (at 50% off). It has 25 different Christmas shapes and they're such a cute size for wax melts! This mold is safe for oven use up to 446 degrees Fahrenheit.   

Even cheaper are these two silicone molds I picked up at Dollar Tree. Ironically, these are being sold as ice cube trays. But I can attest from my own experience that they can, indeed, withstand hot melted wax, and once dried the melts popped out no problem.  

The size of melts made in the ice cube molds were markedly bigger than the mini melts. You should be cognizant of the size of the wax melt warmer that will be used, if you can, when deciding on what size of customized melts to make.  

Last but not least is this Lollipop Swirl Silicone Candy Mold I picked up at Wal-Mart. You can find it in their candy making aisle. I ended up not using it this time, but I'll definitely use it next time. This silicone mold can withstand temperatures as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

HOW TO REMELT OLD CANDLE WAX

While the double boiler method can be used for the remelting, I'm pretty impatient and jumped straight to the microwave method. I like to use a glass measuring cup for this because: 1) it can withstand the heat and 2) it has a built-in pour spout.

NOTE:  It's important not to overheat the wax in the microwave. It's best to start with just a few seconds at a time depending on how much wax you're trying to melt down. I melted my wax in 35 second increments until it was fully melted (took numerous rounds). 

BE SURE TO USE AN OVEN MITT AND BE CAREFUL -- THE GLASS CONTAINER AND WAX WILL BE VERY HOT!!!!

Stop and check on it often until you've reached the melting point, at which time you'll carefully pour the melted wax into the silicone molds. 

Once the melted wax solidifies you've got your Christmas wax melts! Mine took about a half hour to solidify enough to be able to pop them out of the molds.

Just gently pop them out of the mold and either enjoy them yourself or better yet -- give them as gifts to neighbors, friends and family.

If you're making "Christmas" wax melts, ideally, you want to be using left over Christmas-scented candles. Unfortunately, none of my Christmas candles were burned down low enough for me to use for this project.

Therefore, while my DIY Christmas wax melts are in cute little Christmas shapes, their scents are apple pumpkin streusel, frosted vanilla cupcake and hot buttered rum! 

But that's okay, since I'm gifting family members with these wax melts and I know they won't have a problem with that. I know they're going to love them no matter the scent (and to be fair, some might argue that hot buttered rum could be considered a Christmas scent after all).  

Now it was time to wrap them for gifting. I used 4 oz. quilted crystal Ball jars and they were perfect for the job. The glass jars will protect and store the wax melts indefinitely. 

 

I like the quilted crystal glass jars better than just plain glass for gifting purposes -- they just look so much prettier!

I also love the gold lids, especially for Christmas gift giving. Not that the pretty jars need any embellishments, but I went ahead and spruced them up even further with mini Christmas ornaments, mini sleigh bells and festive mini Christmas gift bows. Now all they need is a gift tag and they're good to go!

These DIY Christmas wax melts turned out so great I think I'm going to have to keep a jar of them for myself! And I'm totally planning on saving my unused Christmas candle wax from the upcoming holidays so that next year my Christmas wax melts will actually smell like Christmas!