Recycled Tea Light Christmas decorations

  
I know it’s early. 🙂  But October has, as usual, sent me floating happily away on my initial wave of Christmas excitement and anticipation. How I love it! ❤ Because I will be spending 3 weeks in Finland just before Christmas this year, I am being super dooper organised. I’ve posted before about all my crazy recycled homemade decorations, but thought I might revisit a tutorial from a couple of years ago for decorations that recycle tea light candle holders. I always have a stack of these left over from my oil burner, and this weekend I’m making a long garland out of them for over the window. 🙂
  

Materials:

Small sharp pair of scissors

Empty tea light containers (they are rarely completely empty after use, but any excess wax and wick holder will just come out as you go so there is no need to clean them out)

A knitting needle (small sized dpn) or empty ball point pen for the embossing

A cutting mat or old magazine to lean on 

Sharp needle and thread for hanging

A caution: this stuff is SHARP! The cut edges and scraps are very very sharp so please be careful.

Instructions:

First cut the edge of the container into 8 equal segments.

I find the easiest way to do this is divide it in quarters first, then halve them.

   
    
 After the 8 segments have been cut, flip it over and flatten the metal out, pressing down from the back. Use something with a flat base to do this, such as a book or a piece of wood.

   
Now cut each of the 8 edge sections into points.

 
  
Flip it over so the inside is facing up – it looks best if you do the embossing on the internal side. Resting on the cutting mat or magazine, use your knitting needle or old pen to emboss designs in the star. This is easy to do and you will soon see how much pressure is required to get a good effect. Use the photo as a guide, or come up with your own designs. Flip it again to see the finished effect.
   
   
Use the sewing needle to carefully puncture a hole in the end of one point (I actually did this over a small nail dent in a table top) and thread the hanging tie through. Tie off and you’re done! These look great on the Christmas tree or threaded in a line like a garland, or hung from a hoop at different lengths to make a mobile. You could add a moon shape to that as well. If you rounded off the points, they could of course be non- Christmassy flowers too.

  
Here’s the link to the pdf version. 
B 🙂