Debbi Powell Designs: How to make a Christmas Tealight

Hiya crafty friends,

Well, I am a bit behind with my Christmas crafting, but operation Christmas has now begun in earnest.

So, hopefully, in the next few weeks I'll be sharing my festive makes.

Late last year I got some great buys in the post Christmas sales and I've been dying to use them.

One of which was these packs of two mercury glass tealight holders, at the bargain price of...50p!!!! :-) I was planning from the beginning to make them festive, and as they were such a good price, I challenged myself to make the whole thing on a budget.

I love the look of these holders and got them in dusky pink, silver and red. I'll use the dusky pink for this tutorial.

I took some brown gingham ribbon (Bargain #2: which I got for £1 for 10m!!) and wrapped around to get the length I wanted.

To secure the ribbon I applied a dot of hot glue at the back and also where the ribbon crossed at the front.

I added some natural coloured twine, which is bargain #3. I got a very large amount for, I think it was, £1.99

After I trimmed the twine to length I gave it a little 'haircut', as it was a little bit hairy :) and this just neatened it up

To make them more festive I added some berry stamens, which I got from ebay (bargain #4) and I got 12 bouquets in total . Each bouquets contains approx. 12 branches, so there was approx 144 branches in total for only £4.00. That's 3p a branch!!! And I've already used them on another project, which I will share soon. The fir I used was from a little 2ft Christmas tree that was in my loft and had never been used, so I took it apart.

I cut a short length off the end of a branch with some wire cutters and then cut a second, very slightly longer, from the same branch. As the top of this one was flat, I trimmed it to a point to match the other and make it look more natural

Using hot glue I added them to the top of the ribbon

I took one branch of the berries and snipped away the wire stem...

...and added to the centre of the firs.

I took apart another branch of berries, so I now had individual stamens...

...which I added amongst the greenery.

So here with have the finished item, and breaking all the supplies down to individual prices the grand total of the finished item was...you wont believe it...36p!!!!!