Its Monday...its the holidays...its another Simple 6 project...where I share a simple gift idea that can be created from the most common of items...made by hand and given from the heart...
If you want to visit the first project in the series, art journals made from composition notebooks, click here
There is a soothing presence about candlelight...the warm glow, the dance of the flame. I am not a religious person but I always offer to burn a candle in lieu of saying a prayer whenever there is distress, pain or agony...the light does seem to banish the darkness...so why not give a gift of light...
Let's start with collecting a few glass jars from the recycle bin...
I find that straight-sided jars with a large mouth work best...
Next I gathered up a pair of worn socks and a nasty old wool sweater...washed both of them in hot water to shrink them...I'm going to use the sleeves from the sweater and the ribbing of the socks to cover the jars...
I cut the ribbing off of each sock...and then trimmed one of the ribbing pieces so that the length was exactly equal to the height of the jar it would cover...the foot piece that's leftover...ideal for another project - applying paint or wax to my art collage pieces...nothing goes to waste here!
Same process for cutting the sweater sleeves...the length of the sleeve cut is equal to the height of the jar it will cover...
Before I slide the sleeve over the jar, I fill the jar about 3/4 full with sand...
I'm going to nestle a tea light in the sand...
I like having the tea light up off the bottom of the jar...and when its burned out, its easy to replace. If I was going to give one of these lights as a gift, I'd probably would include 3-4 tea lights as well. Don't have any sand? how about rice...beans...salt...or coffee...what you are looking for is any substance that can add some weight and hold the tea light firmly in place...
After sliding the sock and/or the sweater ribbing over the jar, I used jute twine and a few vintage mother of pearl buttons to add a little interest and to make sure that the ribbing didn't slide off when you picked up the jar...one of my holiday notecards adds an extra flourish...
Here's the completed set...
As you can see, you don't have to fill the jar with sand and a tea light...here I grabbed a handful of dried poppy pods...holly and greenery would certainly echo the spirit of the season...or a couple of paperwhite narcissus bulbs would work quite well...
I'm loving my candles so much I think I might have to keep them...but there's no shortage of recycled jars and worn out socks...so it will be easy to make more for gifts...
looking for more holiday inspiration...there's plenty out there...I'm joining the holiday junk fest over at Knick of Time...
and the Party Junk festivities over at Funky Junk Interiors...
