How to Make a Tea Candle Holder from a Recycled Baby Food Jar

A recycled baby food jar tea candle holder, lit in the dark

Make your own tea candle holders with this easy technique to dress up recycled baby food jars. This is a nice project for adult or children. Young children can do this with supervision. These make nice pieces for individual place settings, or to line along a window sill or mantelpiece. You can make one or more in a sitting. They just need drying time after they are done. Use any color tissue you like, either to match your décor or a color that a gift recipient might like.

Things You'll Need

• Baby food jar
• Tissue paper
• Scissors
• White craft glue
• Small bowl
• Foam or sponge craft paint brush
• Water
• Tea candles in metal holders

Instructions

1. Clean and wash an old baby food jar. If you don’t have baby food jars, ask at a local child care place or a friend who has a baby to save them for you. Make sure you remove the label and any sticky label residue left underneath, too. You want a nice clean jar to work with. The lids are not used for the baby jar tea candle holders.

2. Pick the solid colors or patterned tissue paper you are going to use for the tea candle holders. You don’t need much paper for each tea holder, so a few sheets of tissue paper will cover quite a few baby jars. Pick patterns or colors for each holiday or make some to match your plates or room décor. Then change them around for each season or setting. They are simple and inexpensive enough to make a lot of them for just a little money.

3. Cut the tissue paper into small pieces of different shapes. You don’t have to make precise shapes. You can just randomly start snipping piles of cut pieces. They need to be fairly small. This is a mosaic style project, so you want different shapes and pieces. There is no precise design you have to follow. Just create it how you like it.

4. Brush one side of the jar with a white glue and water mixture. The glue just needs a small amount of water to thin it down enough to brush on smoothly and not so thick that it is goopy. Then begin putting the cut pieces over the area you have brushed with the glue and water mixture in whatever arrangement you like. Press them in place. Continue all the way around the surface of the baby food jar, including the bottom to give it a finished look. Don’t go over the lip of the jar or into the jar with the tissue paper. The tissue paper could catch on fire when the candle is burning if you do.

5. Brush a couple layers of the glue mixture over the whole tissue covered area to seal the pieces in place after the whole jar is covered with tissue paper pieces. Turn the jar over to let it dry so no tissue paper surface is touching the drying area. Otherwise it will stick and tear as it dries.

6. Put the tea candle with its metal casing in the tea candle holder and light the candle. The burning candle will look like it is coming through stained glass.

Tips & Warnings

• Use a light-colored paper background and scatter dark shadow shapes like stars or trees if you are good with the scissors. They will show up nicely against the light background with the candles lit.

• Be careful picking these up after they have been burning. The glass is very hot.