DIY Candles

In the spirit of our wedding anniversary, I thought I would show you something I made for our wedding - it was part of the decoration on the tables, and doubled also as the take home gift for people! It was a very economical way to accomplish both of those things (table decor, and thank you gift for attendees). I say "I" made these...it was a joint effort, really. My dad did all of the cutting work, I did all of the decor part:-)

We made three sizes of candles, this is the tallest and the medium one. The cute shortest ones were all taken by wedding guests, I didn't have any of that size left over

So, we bought fence posts. Big, long, 3.5x3.5 fence posts from Home Depot. My Dad cut them down to size - 3 sizes (S, M, L), and then he drilled a shallow hole in the top, the exact diameter of a tealight candle.

After they were all cut, I lined them back up on the floor, as though they were still big, long, sticks of lumber, and I started painting them. When dry, rotate all and paint the next side, repeat, repeat.

An example of how I lined them back up end to end for painting

After I had finished the cream colour base coat, I applied painters tape, along the whooooole big long string of lumber - I did not do them individually, which I believe saved me a ton of time. Then I did the glaze coat. Once dried, remove tape, and then tape the next side, repeat, repeat.

Once all sides were painted, a glazed stripe put on, and all dried, I used a marbley-spatter spray paint, (found at Michaels) in gold, and sprayed them all, again, side by side, waiting until each side was dry before turning.

Since this was not only table decor, but a take home gift, we adhered this message to the bottom of each candle.

To finish it off, I tied a burgundy ribbon around the candles (our wedding colour), and we were done! The nice thing about this neutral candle, is that you can change the ribbon out to your desired colour to match any home or seasonal decor. Easy! The whole thing itself was really very affordable to make, and not very difficult at all. The only "con" to this, when making the volume of them that I was (I probably made 150 of these), is that it is time consuming. Not labour intensive, just lots of waiting time between coats of paint before you can flip them all for the next side.

Cute, simple, and I still use these in my home decor now!