Making your own incense sticks is a relatively cheap innovative way of making your home smell wonderful. Making incense sticks at home in bulk will save you money verses buying them at the local department store or grocer; the best part is that you can create the smell of your choice, so be creative. Gotcha covered tested and approved!
Difficulty: Moderately Easy
Instructions
Step 1
Before getting started with how to make your homemade incense sticks you will need to make a trip to the local craft store to purchase the following items. Your list will consist of unscented incense sticks, they can be purchased in bundles of 10,20, 50 or 100 as well as fragranced oil(s) and a bottle of DPG, also known as Dy Propylene Glycol. This project should cost you less than $10 and best of all you will be able to make approximately 12 pkgs of incense sticks for what you would normally pay to purchase 2 pkgs in a local department store.
Step 2
Now that you have the incense sticks, oils and DPG it is time to gather a few more items that you most likely have already in your home. You will need a few paper towels, plastic food wrap, a cooling rack and a few tall bottles. You will need one bottle for each fragranced oil that you are using and one bottle for the DPG. I like using Sunkist soda pop bottles simply because they are tall and slender and easy to work with however, any bottle plastic or glass will do.
Step 3
You are now ready to get started making your homemade incense sticks. Take one bottle and fill it until it is approximately 1 inch from the top with the fragranced oil that you have chosen. Next you will dip the incense sticks into the oil one at a time. Once you have dipped all of your incense sticks in the oil you will want to let them rest together in the oil for 3-4 minutes to absorb well.
Step 4
After the incense sticks have soaked, take them out one by one and place them on your cooling rack to dry for approximately 3 hours making sure that you have placed a few paper towels underneath the cooling rack to catch the excess. When taking the sticks from the oil make sure to allow the sticks to drip as much excess oil off of them into the bottle prior to placing them on the rack, this will ensure less mess for clean up. Once they have dried, bundle them together and wrap them in plastic wrap folding in the sides and allow them to rest overnight at room temperature.
Step 5
So here we are and its the next day and you are ready to finish making your incense sticks. Unwrap them from the plastic food wrap and one by one take each incense stick and roll it against a paper towel drying any excess oil that may be lingering. You will have the tendency to want to just blot them dry but it is really best to just roll them against the paper towel like you would roll a Christmas cookie in colored sugar.
Step 6
Almost done but now you have another choice to make. If you want a fast burning incense stick then stop here your done, yea.. but, if you want the traditional slow burning incense sticks then you must continue with a few more steps to complete this project in its entirety.
Step 7
Continuing on with the slow burning incense sticks you will now get the last bottle and fill it 1 inch from the top with the DPG solution. Take one incense stick and dip it into the bottle containing the DPG holding it in the solution for approximately 3 seconds, just to make sure that stick has been well coated and then place it on the cooling rack to dry for 4 hours. It is important that you do not allow the incense stick to drip the excess DPG back into the bottle as you did with the fragranced oil, let it drip onto a paper towel. If you are using more than one fragranced oil the DPG will infuse all smells permanently.
Step 8
This time once your incense sticks have dried for 4 hours you will want to take them one by one and roll them against a paper towel "prior" to wrapping them together in the plastic food wrap, yes, the same steps as the oil only reversed. Allow them to rest overnight for use the next day.
 Atalina The Fallen Angel · Wed Jul 21, 2010 @ 07:41am · 0 Comments |
