Home > Crafts for and with Kids > Winter season Tea Light Holder

Winter season Tea Light Holder

One of my aims this year with J is that we have something to represent each season. Last year I saw some wonderful ideas from Red Ted Art and Nurture Store using different media. So this year we’re doing something similar and as part of our Explore Outdoors I’ve decided that they should be something that we can use in the garden so for each season we’re making a tea light holder. Here is our first Winter Themed Tea Light Holder.

Winter Tea Light Holder
Winter Tea Light Holder our season activity

 What you need

A tea light holder or Jam Jar – we got our tea light holders as a set of 4 which is perfect the other 3 are stored away for our other seasons
Silver Acrylic Paint
Inside tube from a Cling Film/Tin Foil as these tend to be slightly stronger
Foam winter shape that is sticky backed
PVA (White Glue) mixed half and half with water
Tissue Paper

This activity took us about 3 days to do with the drying time in between.

Make a Spring Tea Light Holder as well.

How the fun happens

I started off with creating a printing roller to put snowflakes onto our jar easily. To make this I used the inside from a cling film roll as the cardboard tube is much stronger than most other that I have found and to it I stuck a foam sticky snow flake. J and I practised printing snowflakes on paper first so that he could get used to rolling the tube and painting the snowflake on a curved edge.

Home made Rolling Printer
Our homemade roller printer for the snowflake

Once he was confident I sat with him and held the jar (it’s glass so was very afraid that he would drop and it would break everywhere!) and we printed our snowflake onto the jar. Because it’s a roller the snowflakes were quite evenly printed around the jar.

The printed snowflakes on the jar
Printed snowflakes on the jar

We then left the jar to dry overnight as we had used acrylic paint I wanted it to be very dry before adding the glue/water mix and tissue paper. J and I had great fun ripping up the tissue paper into small squares to apply to the jar (I think this was probably his favourite part of the activity – although the amount that ended up on the floor once he had “SCRUNCHED UP” he loves scrunching them up). To make the glue mix I used PVA (white glue) and mixed it 1 to 1 with water which was perfect to get the tissue paper to stick and then act as a varnish on the tissue paper afterwards.

Using glue and water mix to stick tissue paper to and varnish a tea light holder
PVA glue and water mix to add the tissue paper to the tea light holder

We only put one layer of the tissue paper on the jar and left it to dry – doing this I held the jar whilst J painted the glue on and then added the tissue paper. Be warned the glue/water mix and the tissue paper that I used ran and I ended up coated with bright blue dye from the tissue paper and whilst it dried a ring was left on our vinyl table cloth but this did wash away. We then repainted it with more glue and water mix once dry to act as a varnish and then left it to dry again.

The finished tea light is really effective and will look great in our garden in the summer and also next winter hanging from one of the trees (we intend to use the mini electric tea lights as a safety feature).

Winter Tea Light Holder
Winter Tea Light Holder our season activity

 

Author
Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.

9 Comments

  1. That is really clever and very beautiful! Look forward to seeing the other seasons you have in store.

    Thanks for linking to Family Frolics.:)

  2. Lovely tea light holder! Which reminds me… we need to get onto our four season’s craft!

    Thank you for sharing on Kids Get Crafty!

    Maggy

  3. Love your winter candle holders! We just made snowflake candle holders too! =) Where do you get jars with hangers like that? We just used old food jars but I like the possibility of hanging our candle holders.

    1. Ours were from a UK company Baker Ross (www.bakerross.co.uk) but I would guess they could be found in most craft stores – if not it’s possible to make a hanger using some strong garden wire if your jar has a lip for it to sit under.

  4. This looks really good can nana have one for the garden, please.

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