Pressed Flower Candles

January always brings that sense of darkness and emptiness after Christmas lights disappear, so I always find myself filling up that space with candlelight to carry me through those long winter evenings. After the abundance of holiday decorations, I appreciate the simplicity and calmness white brings into the home, but this year I tried something different by adding a tiny bit of colour decorating white candles with pressed flowers and leaves. A great way to get through all the beauties stored in our favourite flower press. A simple craft that requires just a few elements and makes a great gift! Here I will share what worked best for me and hope to inspire you to try out your own method.

You will need:

• candles to decorate
• 2 tealights
• thin paintbrush (note: you will not be able to use as a paintbrush afterwards)
• pressed flowers and leaves (if you haven’t collected your own, you can find a great selection here)

Let’s get started!

Start by gathering your pressed flowers and leaves, playing around with them until you find a composition that you are happy with. Consider not only colour, size and shapes, but most importantly texture. Hard stems tend to poke out and may be difficult to bend around the candles, thick leaves or flowers with many layers of petals may be too bulky while fine petals tend to break off and need to be handled very carefully.

Be gentle and take your time with this step as there is no going back once you fix them on the candle. Light a tealight and leave it to start melting away in a safe spot while you decide what you will start with.

Next, place your chosen leaf or flower on the candle and bring your tealight as close as possible. Grab your paintbrush and start “painting” with the melted wax, sticking the leaf onto the candle. Be gentle, but quick as wax dries immediately. It requires a bit of practice to find the precision you will need, but it’s not difficult. What works best for me is: dip the very tip of the brush only into the melted wax, quickly hover it over the flame until it drips and immediately seal the edge of the leaf/flower onto the candle. Short brushstrokes using very little wax work best.

Work your way all around the edges of the leaf before you move into the centre. Carefully layer the wax making sure you keep your leaf flat creating a thin veil that will seal it onto your candle. Now you are ready to move onto the next leaf/flower.

I found that the candle tended to look a bit messy as some lumps of wax had formed or a few brushstrokes became visible, so I decided to hold the candle horizontally above the tealight in those spots to gently warm up the wax again, allowing it to briefly melt back and create a smooth final surface. Be careful to not overdo this as you may end up burning the dry flowers!

Once you have smoothed out the surface you are done! It’s a very quick craft with beautiful results, so I’d advise you to do a good batch once you’re at it and let your creativity loose!

Final note: As always, there are many ways to do this craft, and no right or wrong so explore and find what works for you , just be mindful that you will be using fire and dry plant material, so take the necessary precautions, particularly if you are doing this with children.