Votive Candle Holders Made from Glasses

These easy DIY votive candle holders are made from old glasses – you won’t spend a lot of money for this pretty, vintage inspired home decor.

Skills Required: Beginner. You can decorate candle holders with little crafting experience. It does help to have experience with Mod Podge so you know how to apply it and smooth down the paper without wrinkles.

Over at Hammer Like a Girl, we usually try to use materials that have been cast off, scrounged, or salvaged. So when we first were planning this DIY votives project, we thought it would be a great idea to use cut-off bottles.

You’ve all seen the technique online – soak string in acetone, wrap it around a bottle, light it on fire, turn turn turn to get an even burn and when the flame starts to die down, dunk it ice water, and the bottle breaks where the string was, essentially turning a bottle into a glass.

It sounds so cool (and easy). We went out and bought acetone, dug in our recycling bins and went to work. Maybe we were doing something wrong, but for the life of us, we could not get a nice clean break.

The edges were jagged-y, like something you’d see in a bar fight. So with singed arm hair, we went to the Goodwill, where we bought three glasses for $.69/each instead. We decided to use those for a recycled craft instead. WE came up with these votives!

Here’s some instructions – not how to singe your arm hair – but for making unique decoupage votive candle holders. If you want to Mod Podge on glass, this is a perfect craft to get you started.

DIY Votive Candle Holders

Gather These Supplies

• Drinking glasses, preferably with straight sides
• Ephemera of your choice – we used an old poetry book, a fiction magazine, and old postage stamps
• Antique Matte Mod Podge (you can use any Mod Podge formula)
• Brush
• X-Acto knife
• Fine sandpaper (220-grit)
• Bottle for holding the glass while decoupaging

First find some clear drinking glasses – the straighter the sides the better. We lucked out at Goodwill and found a large, a medium, and a small glass, making a perfect little varied size “set”.

Select some of your favorite papers to cover your votive holders. Old wrapping paper, books, magazines, craft paper work great.

We used an old poetry book, stamp collection and a literary magazine from 1954 (with a great orange advertisement for whiskey). If you don’t want to use originals, you can use laserjet (no smear!) copies instead and hang onto the originals.

Cut the paper so it is slightly larger than the glass. The paper should hang over the top and bottom edges.

If the paper is too small to go all the way around the votive candle holders, that’s ok – you can just piece another paper over the top and cover the gap.

Spread Mod Podge onto the back of the paper.

Turn the glass on its side, and lay the paper over the top of the glass, letting the excess paper hang off the top/bottom edges.

Roll the glass on the table until the paper covers the glass.

Smooth the paper onto the glass, working from the center outward to the edges.

If you have a gap, cut another piece of paper to cover it. Keep the design in mind, here’s a chance to add a little interest.

Let the decoupage dry thoroughly  – a couple hours should do.

Trim the excess paper off the top by using an X-Acto knife. Gently poke the blade through the paper and using the edge of the glass as a guide, trim off excess paper.

Repeat along the bottom edge.

If needed, touch up areas along the bottom of the glass (where it curves) with Mod Podge.

Gently press down/in with fingers, working your way around the glass.

Let Mod Podge dry thoroughly. If the edges are a little rough, you can take fine sandpaper and gently touch up the edges, sanding in an inward direction.

Place the glass upside-down on a stand of some sort (we used a soda bottle, a glass and bottle of paint) and apply a coat of Mod Podge to the outside.

Let it dry and repeat with another coat of Mod Podge.

There you go! A simple project (if you skip the part where you light your arm hair a string on fire) that has some fun effects when you place lit candles inside.

You can customize these votive candle holders and use your favorite pattern papers, kids drawings, etc.

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If you enjoyed this project, I’d love for you to check out these other recycled craft ideas:

• Awesome Mod Podge Recycled Crafts
• DIY Cake Plate from a Thrift Store Find
• How to Decorate Altoid Tins
• Recycled DIY Desk Organizer