This is another smaller project for the oyster roast engagement party, and another project that I’ll be making again in the future.  Since the engagement party is at night and we’ll have a some tables set up outside, I decided to make some fun, oyster themed candles.

Oyster Shell Candles

What you’ll need:

• Oyster shells
• Tea lights
• Pan (that you don’t mind melting max in)
• Aluminum foil
• Spoon

This turned out to be a fairly easy project, but took longer than I anticipated to finish it.  Start by picking out shells that sit flat (so wax doesn’t spill) and are fairly deep enough to hold the wax.  Get the tea lights out and pop the outside metal covering off.  Some tea lights let you just pull the wicks out easily with their lil metal stand, but of course mine weren’t like that.. so I removed the metal “stands” and had to melt the wax to get the wicks.

Put the pan on low heat, spray with cooking spray (I thought it might help with wax clean up), and put the candles in to start melting.

While the wax was melting down, i cleaned out the inside of the oysters to make sure there wasn’t any dirt and put them in a pan lined in foil (to protect the pan when I inevitably spilled wax).

I grabbed wicks from the wax when they had melted enough to separate and placed them standing up in the oysters.  That was surprisingly easy… but I had to work with some of them to make them stay.  I’m sure the wicks with the metal stands would stand up easier, but this method worked.

Once the wicks were in place, I used a plastic spoon to get some melted wax from the pan and spoon it into the oyster shells, around the wicks.  This was definitely easier said than done, and took the majority of my time.

Some of the wicks fell over, so I let a small amount of wax start to harden in the fridge, and then put the wicks back in, standing up.  I poured too much wax into some shells, and they spilled over onto the foil.. so I learned to pour the wax slower in shallower shells, so it would harden before spilling over the sides.

Slowly, but surely I filled the shells up with wax, leaving the top of the wick exposed.

Once I filled up the shells to a good point, and was out of wax, I put them in the fridge to harden for about an hour.  Once the wax was hard, I took them out and removed any wax that spilled over and stuck to the bottom of the shells.  The candles were done!

Another party task off the list!  Hunter liked them so much he asked why we had to give them away.. Looks like I’ll be finding more shells that are good for holding wax and making more for us soon!

Want to skip the hassle and just buy some? I sell these on Etsy!