Craft Advent 14: Decorated Tealight Holders

This is the time of year that candles and tea lights come into their own… our natural light is fading by 4pm these days, and the lovely glow from these tealights make everywhere look so cosy!I love to group lights together, and jars make a great candle-holders (and so much safer)

I made some beautiful tea-light holders today, using jam jars I had here in the kitchen.I wanted them to have a “vintage-y” look, so I colour-photocopied pages from old missals and photographs (you have to really colour-photocopy to get the lovely old tone of the paper- I tried black and white copies and staining them after, but they weren’t nearly as good)

I am amassing a great collection of vintage photocopies…
laces, stamps and buttons…
and had tea-stained tissue-paper, ribbons, lace, and paper a few days ago, waiting for a project like this 🙂I carefully cut out the old postcards and missal sheets (with relevant “Christmastide” pages!), and, with a 50/50 PVA glue and water mix, I brushed this solution on the back, then positioned it on the jar (careful to wipe any excess glue off so that it doesn’t get “smear-y”)

(you could photocopy old photos of family members, letters, receipts to make them more personal to the recipient if you are giving them as a gift)

I continued to layer, adding Christmas stamps and a cut-out of a flower. The idea is to have a beautiful composition that doesn’t look too “formal”, but is still coherent.

I finished off the jar with some lovely lace and tied an old vintage button on, positioning it so that it balanced the whole composition!Then I promptly made 2 more!!

Finished just in time to photograph them glowing in the dusky light.

Aren’t they pretty?

And what a simple, easy gift to make- for a loved one – or yourself!

(This was originally posted on this very blog in November 2010)

• Craft Advent,
• Decorated tealight holders,
• gift idea,
• jam jars,
• ribbons,
• tutorials,
• vintage