DIY: Fun Votive Candles

Since our wedding reception was at night time E and I wanted out reception to be filled with candle light. Some tables had lanterns instead of floral centerpieces and all of the tables had small votive candles. We wanted to have unique votives not "your average wedding votive" (whatever that may be). I was able to purchase 96 votives on http://www.craigslist.com/ for only $25.00. Craigslist is a wonderful site for finding wedding items such as candle holders that are often cheaper to buy than to rent from a venue but you probably won't ever use 96 of them again.

We then purchased 6 packages of 16 votive candles. We found our candles at Wal-Mart but you can find them at other stores. Wal-Mart actually also has a package of 96 unscented votive candles for only $29.97. Something to think about: most peole think about small tea-light candles when they think about weddings. There is a difference though between tea-light and votive candles. Most tea-light candles are small and often sit in a small metal wrap. Votive candles are thicker and are wax with no metal. Our venue suggested that we should buy votive candles because they last a lot longer tea-lights and we didn't want to risk the candles burning down before the party winded down.

Now that we had the candle holders and the votives we needed a little zazz! I had read about Washi tape in Martha Stewart Wedding Magazine so we decided to look into it some more. The major Washi tape website that I found was http://www.cutetape.com/ We chose five different tapes so that there would be different votives on each table. We chose pink, green, yellow, and orange tapes with varying patterns. We bought a 3-pack for $8.25 and then 2 separate patterns for $4.00 each with $2.97 for shipping. I should also mention that we did not use all of the tape. We had lots of Washi tape left over for other fun craft projects.

Once we had all of the materials it was time to put them together. We originally wanted to have the tape go straight around the candle holder in a horizontal stripe pattern. We soon realized that in order to do that you need straight votive candle holders NOT the traditional tapered "shot glass" shape which we had purchased. We decided that instead of fighting the candle holders we should just work with them. We decided on a shape that looked like a lemon or orange twist. We made sure to cut the tape at an angle, begin near the bottom of the glass and then roll it following the shape of the glass and then cutting it again at an angle up towards to top of the glass. This was one of the more fun DIY projects for our wedding because it did not take a lot of time and it was fun to make each glass unique rather than stressing about making them all look the same.

Materials
Glass candleholders
Votive candles
Washi tape
Scissors

Cost
Glass candleholders- $25.00
Votive candles- $29.97
Washi tape- $8.25 + $4.00 + $4.00 + $2.97
Total: 96 unique votive candles for $74.19