There are times when I’m putting a tablescape together, and I can’t find the color tea lights that I need.

It’s something that drives me absolutely nuts.  I always have candles on my table.  I love what the candle light does to the ‘feeling’ of a table.  But I can’t handle plain white when I need color!  Since I already paint candles to match my color scheme, I figured I’d try it with some tea lights.  It worked beautifully!

Here are some that I did to go with my Mardi Gras Tablescape.

I started with plain white tea lights.  They’re so inexpensive, can be found almost anywhere, and I always have them on hand.

Then I mixed the acrylic paint that I wanted to use with candle & soap medium, following the directions.  This time I used glitter paint. (no surprise there)

I followed the same procedure as for tapers or pillar candles, except instead of painting the sides of the candles, I just painted the tops.

I had to use 3 coats of paint to get the coverage that I wanted & the amount of sparkle that I needed.  I added a new coat once the previous coat of paint had dried.  The paint will look milky until it dries.  You can see the milky paint in the left side of the top right candle (below)

Once the paint is dried, the milky finish will disappear and the finish will look solid, in this case, solid & sparkly.  (since I used glitter paint, to get the coverage that I wanted, I added globs of it on the candle, which is why it doesn’t appear smooth)

They burn the same as regular candles, and the best part is that they matched what I wanted them to match. And you can use any color of acrylic paint that you want!

If you don’t have what you want, make it!

Happy Creating everyone!