DIY Pumpkin Spice Latte Candle

The highly-anticipated PSL season is here and we are pretty excited about that. To be honest, we’re part of the population who look forward to seeing ‘Pumpkin Spice Latte’ on the Starbucks menu every year but we only get around to picking it up once the whole year. Don’t get me wrong, we love the spicy, warm, sweet goodness that is the PSL, but we’re not going to order one every week. This year, we really wanted to make some sort of craft themed around the beloved PSL. Countless recipes, Halloween costumes, and memes have all been made in honor of this seasonal sip but the PSL-themed DIY projects are truly lacking. While planning our fall content calendar, Britta came up with the genius idea to create a PSL candle in an actual Starbucks cup (the ceramic version, not the paper).

We eagerly started planning and ordering all the supplies needed to make this idea a reality. After outings to two different Starbucks, a last-minute trip to Michaels and multiple test runs, we think we perfected the Pumpkin Spice Latte candle.

To make one of your own or to give as a gift, follow these steps…

Supplies:

Caramel colored liquid dye (make sure it’s wax soluble)
Coffee-scented fragrance oil
Pumpkin spice fragrance oil
Pumpkin harvest fragrance oil
Soy wax flakes
A candle wick
Starbucks travel coffee mug (12 oz)
Glue gun & glue sticks

Directions:

Step 1: Lay parchment/wax paper down next to your stove to make clean-up easier.

Step 2: Measure out your wax flakes. A good rule of thumb is to double the volume of the candle vessel, which in this case is your Starbucks mug.

Step 3: Hot glue the metal wick plates to the bottom of the cup & wait for it to completely dry (only about 1-2 minutes)

Step 4: Normally you would now wrap the excess wick around a pencil and rest on the opening to hold the wick in place, but our wicks weren’t long enough. Just in case yours aren’t that long either, put a pencil on each side of the wick and tape the pencils together. Make sure the hold is strong between the pencils so it’s really holding the wick in place. See picture below for our set up.

Step 5: Heat the wax on low heat, stirring frequently just until the wax flakes are melted. Remove the pan from heat.

Step 6: Add 1/3 of the bottle of dye to the melted wax followed by your fragrance oils. For this project, we added approx. 35 drops of the coffee bean oil, approx. 25 drops of the pumpkin spice oil and approx. 25 drops of the pumpkin harvest oil. The number of drops you’ll need will greatly depend on how strong you’d like the scent to be and the brand of essential oil you use.) Since I’m making 2 candles, I’ve added 40 drops of each oil.

Note – The number of drops you’ll need will greatly depend on how strong you’d like the scent to be and the brand of oil you use. We wanted to make sure the candle was heavily fragranced so we went a little heavy handed. You also don’t have to use both the pumpkin spice and pumpkin harvest. We felt like the pumpkin spice was very sweet and we wanted to balance it with the spiciness of the pumpkin harvest. The most important thing is that you have some sort of coffee-scented oil and some pumpkin spice scented oil. It’s also important that you add more coffee than pumpkin spice.

Step 6: Slowly pour the wax into the cup making sure your wick doesn’t move.

Step 7: Allow wax to cool to a solid state. We like to wait overnight to really make sure it’s cooled all the way through. Don’t forget to trim the wicks to ½” when you’re all done!