Yarn wrapped tealight holders

Today I thought I would share with you a way I have been upcycling/recycling some glass candle holders wich have run out into nice colourful yarny tealight holders. They are super simple and quick, you may well get your fingers a bit sticky but that's really the extent of the hardship involved!

First find a jar you want to wrap with yarn. This is a Yankee Candle which has burned all the way down to the end leavig only it's waxy residue.

 

Then you need to clean out your empty jar:

You will need some PVA glue or Mod Podge or similar, a brush and some left over yarn. I used a self striping DK weight yarn and PVA glue.

Paint some glue on your glass jar. You need enough to stick the yarn to the glass and to the yarn above it so it sits tightly together, but not so much that it's all squidgy and oozing out between the yarn and running down the sides. I find it best to paint a bit of glue on at a time, wrap the yarn around and keep 'nudging' the yarn up so it sitting all snug together and not leaving lots of gaps.

Keep wrapping and nudging all the way down to the end. Snip the end of the yarn. Make sure your yarn end is glued down securely and leave to dry. Overnight is best.

And that's it all finished. Isn't that easy? The jars I had have lids so, to give them a little face lift to match their new yarny exteriors, I crocheted little motifs in the same yarn. I used the free patterns for 'Teeny Tiny Flowers' and 'Teeny Tiny Hearts' from Attic24. They were just the right size to fit on the glass lids.

A good blob of glue and voila!

When everything is dry add some tealights and light 'em up! I like the way the candles glow through the colours of the yarn.

As you can see from my pic you don't have to stop at jars for tealights. I used the same yarn to wrap an empty, cleaned out beer bottle and now it can be used for flowers.

What will you be wrapping?

L x

My happy crafty day

Hi again. I thought today I'd share with you the lovely day I had yesterday pottering around the house and getting a couple of crafty projects done. It was very satisfying all in all.

I'm very pleased to have finished some crochet fingerless gloves. This is only the second pair of gloves I've made and my first were really basic so I was really happy with these which use two different stitches (back loop double stitch and extended double uk terms) to create a ribbed band and a different pattern on the main body to create interest and I added a couple of little buttons on the cuff.

 

The pattern for these can be found here at CROCHETDREAMS or on Ravelry. There is also a pattern that matches for boot cuffs which I'm sure I'll make up at some point. The pattern is simple and relatively quick to make up (the pattern says two hours for the gloves but it took me about 4 hours for both gloves. Maybe I'm a fairly slow crotcheter, or maybe it's because I watch TV at the same time ;-) )

The second thing I got done yesterday around finishing the gloves was giving a couple of frames a shabby chic makeover. Inspired by the progress on my mirror at the weekend I pulled out a pair of cheap black plastic photo frames I bought from the Pound Shop recently in order to give them a makeover (for anyone from the US reading this the Pound Shop is sort of equivelent to your Dollar Store) Here they are:

Not too attractive I think you'll agree. I liked the vintage style detailing around the edge but black plastic? Yuk. There is nowhere these would go anywhere in my house. First I gave them a coat of the ivory chalk paint I had left over from the weekend. It had been in an airtight container but had got a little drier and thicker. This may be a problem for some projects but I liked the texture that it gave, like old plaster. Here they are after one coat of paint:

Not bad but some of the black was still showing through so I let it dry a while and then added a second coat.

Much better. I didn't want to 'distress' the frame by scuffing away any of the ivory paint as I didn't want any of the black to show through so to pick out some the detail I very lightly sponged on a pale lilac colour. I mixed together my own colour by mixing up some 'powder purple' coloured chalk paint (which was a little too bright to look vintage in my opinion) and then added in some of the ivory.

 I hope that you can see the purple on your monitor.. it's not showing up so well on mine and I have tried my hardest to get a picture in good light. It is very soft and subtle though.

And here is a nice picture of the finished frames. Quite a change from the nasty black plastic. I am so pleased with them and can't wait to find the right pictures to put into them. They will eventually go into our bedroom as I am working towards a Shabby Chic makeover of the whole bedroom in the summer time. :-)

Thank you for reading. If you have liked this post please leave me a little comment to say hi!

L x