5 Ways to Make Emergency Candles from Household Objects

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I'm a word nerd who loves to geek out on how emerging technology affects the lexicon. I was an editor on the first 40 volumes of MAKE, and I love shining light on the incredible makers in our community. In particular, covering art is my passion — after all, art is the first thing most of us ever made. When not fawning over perfect word choices, I can be found on the nearest mountain, looking for untouched powder fields and ideal alpine lakes.

Contact me at snowgoli@gmail.com or via @snowgoli.

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November 22nd, 2013 2

UK-based maker Dave Hax sent us his latest video, showing five easy ways to make candles from things you might already have around the house. Dave makes candles from cheese wax and newspaper, butter and string, a can of tuna (in oil) and string, a wax crayon, and the peel from half an orange and olive oil. With winter on the horizon and our first power outage here in Northern California last night, I was glad I had watched Dave’s vid — a well-spent two and a half minutes.

Bonus: Dave has some other interesting hacks on his YouTube channel, including the light-bulb vase (with LED), the banana pistol, and the carrot ocarina.

2 thoughts on “5 Ways to Make Emergency Candles from Household Objects”

Sean Reynolds says:

November 25th, 2013 at 8:34 am

I found out in college that you can take ordinary toilet paper, roll it up, and stick it into a partially melted candle for a wicked long lasting torch!

I do this still today for starting a camp fire with a teacup candle.
It obviously uses the wax quicker, but it burns much hotter and can start wood with little effort.