DIY Fire Starters - Great Gifts for the Holidays

These DIY fire starters make a beautiful, slightly fragrant gift for the holidays. Inexpensive and easy to create for everyone on your list.

We enjoy a good wood burning fire during the winter. To get things going we use my Homemade Fire Starters made from garden herbs and twine. However, they usually don't last very long.

Recently, I remembered making fire starters as a Girl Scout. We would use cardboard egg cartons and fill them with dryer lint and paraffin wax. Sometimes we would even use dried leaves.

This got me to thinking about making some more fire starters with pretty dried materials and wax. Instead of egg cartons, I used paper muffin liners.

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How to Make Homemade Fire Starters

Supplies

• Paper muffin liners
• Paraffin or candle wax
• Clippings from the yard -- pine, non-toxic berries, mini pine cones
• Citrus peels - orange, lemon, grapefruit
• Cinnamon chips or sticks

We have a lot of hemlock trees in our yard. I'm always thinking of ways to use the adorable mini pine cones from those trees. Once I made tabletop Pine Cone Christmas Trees with them. 

They were perfect for this craft. I also used some dogwood berries and some crushed up cinnamon sticks. Don't you think this combination looks Christmassy? 

In another batch, I added dried orange peel instead of the berries. You can do this easily by simply peeling just the outside layer of any citrus fruit with a vegetable peeler.

The only caveat is that it may take a couple of weeks to dry out. If you are in a hurry you can buy some or try placing them on a cookie sheet in a low-temperature oven for a few hours.

They turned out really nice and I will be giving some to all my fire loving friends this season.

When tested we noticed that they worked best if lighted from the top. You may still need some smaller sticks or other kindling to get the fire going but these DIY fire starters were a great start.

Aren't they pretty? Just another example of how the beauty of nature makes everything look so good.

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P.S. You may also enjoy this post about making Homemade Fire Starters from herbs in the backyard or this Homemade Apple and Orange Potpourri. You can find them and many more creative ideas on my DIY Projects page.

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