Make Your Own Votive Candle Holders

Mini votive holders make great gifts and they look so pretty on a gloomy day!  You can make them in any color combination for the holidays, too (think green and white for St. Patty's Day, pink, red, and white for Valentine's Day.  You get the idea, right?).

You Will Need:

-small glass jar (we used a baby food jar but you can use any size glass jar you want)
-Modge Podge (watered down Elmer's glue will also work)
-foam brush
-small squares of colored tissue paper


How To Make It:

Pour your Modge Podge (or watered down glue) into a disposable container or paper plate (we used plastic paint trays).  

Use your foam brush to paint the jar with the Modge Podge.  This was the hardest part.  We put the jar inside our plastic paint tray to keep it from spinning around.

The paint tray helped hold our jar in place while we were decorating it.

Once you thoroughly coat your jar, start adding the tissue paper squares.  You can overlap them, too, for more of a "stained glass" effect.  Keep adding tissue paper squares to cover your jar.

You can add as many tissue paper squares as you like, depending how "see through" you want it.

As you add pieces you can even paint over them to smooth them down, because the Modge Podge (or watered down glue) will dry clear.

Paint your smelly Modge Podge right over your tissue paper pieces.

It's okay if the tissue paper wrinkles a bit.  You can smooth it out or keep it wrinkled- it still makes for a nice effect!  Then let your jar dry.  We added a battery operated tealight inside of it when it was done.

We added a battery operated tealight to our votive jar.

My son did this one all on his own (and he's five!).  If I had done it myself I might have added more tissue paper at the top to cover the glass spots that were showing.  But who am I to tell this little artist what to do?

These make great little teacher gifts!  We used ours in our "Milo Memorial," which we set up to honor our beloved doggy, Milo, who passed away in July.

Many thanks to fellow Jersey Momma, Lynn S., for giving us this fabulous idea and showing us how it's done!

Our votive holders were easy to make and look so pretty at night!

Jersey Momma Tips:

-My son freaked out about the smell of the Modge Podge, so next time we might use watered down Elmer's glue.  It might seem silly, but my kid is sensitive to stuff like that!  He didn't want to do the painting part at all as soon as he got a whiff of that stuff.

-Try holiday themed votives- red, white and blue for 4th of July, red and green for Christmas.  Or try different sized jars.

-Modge Podge can be purchased anywhere they sell craft materials.  We got ours in the craft section of Walmart.