Pretty Tea Light DIY

This post was inspired by my dear friend Whitney's beautiful DIY Fall Candle tutorial. 

Dallas and I live in a split-level studio apartment and while the upper mezzanine is a wilderness of backpacks, discarded furniture and one sad and lonely mattress base, our lower level is slowly but surely becoming 'home'. 

With a dusting of pictures, plants and personal touches we are working on putting a little bit of love into every corner and making it ours.

We've already been using the staircase leading up to the upper level as a showcase for some simple mason jar tea lights and Whit's tutorial reminded me of a pretty paper tea light DIY I'd seen on Pinterest a while back.

Now for the love of all men who are bearded I cannot find that link to give the original poster of that DIY credit for the idea so anyone who happens to read this and can share the link below I would love to give full and proper credit to to this craft's inspiration ^^

So let's get busy!

First, the gathering of materials. You will need:

1. A shallow basin

2. Ten black tea bags

3. Paper of your choice (I chose thick magazine paper with pretty Korean writing)

4. A small jar

5. Tea light candle

6. Twine

7. Scissors/exacto knife

This tea light has a paper inlay with a heart cut out through which you can see the candle burning inside. I thought it would be nice to tea-dye my paper for a pretty vintage effect but this step is optional.

To tea-dye your paper: Fill a shallow basin with a kettle full of boiling water and around 10 tea bags. Leave until water is cool then remove tea bags. Add paper to basin and leave to steep for around an hour. Remove and hang to dry.

 

Once you have your dry tea-dyed paper, measure the length and circumference of your jar and cut a strip of paper accordingly.

Pencil draw a heart shape onto your paper and cut out using an exacto-knife

Secure your paper inside your jar using tape or seal with a gel medium. Place a candle inside and finish the effect with a ribbon of twine around the neck of the jar.

Here's a peek of my pretty little tea light totally owning it's own step on the stairs. Plain old mason jar tea light wants some twine for his own neck now too.

We'll see about that.

Happy crafting campers!