Rustic Candle Holder by Full Circle Creations

The first thing I did was to lay out the tea lights on a ruler so I could determine how far apart the candles needed to be and how long the piece of wood would need to be.  I determined that I needed a piece that was 17 1/2″ long.

So I went out to the wood pile and found this really cool piece of wood that had been the sides of a feed bunk for cattle.  See the hole in the middle, that’s where it was bolted to the base of the bunk.  So I cut it down to size and and marked out on the board where the holes would go, making sure that a hole would line up exactly where this hole was.

Then I went to the drill press and using a spade bit and drilled out the holes.  The tea lights are 3/4″ deep, so that’s the depth that the holes need to be.

And if you don’t have access to a drill press, you can use the spade bit on your drill, it will just take you a bit longer to get the holes drilled.

Next, I made sure that my tea lights fit the holes.  Since my sander couldn’t get into the holes to sand that smooth, I used a sanding bit for my Dremel but you can use sandpaper.  You just want to make sure it’s smooth so the candles will go in and out easily.  And if you aren’t using flameless candles, you’ll want it smooth so the melted wax will come out easily.

I decided to make another one out of a scrap 2×4 since most of you probably don’t have access to a really old chunk of wood.

Thanks so much Holly for a great tute and giving me one more day of bloggy vacation. It’s definitely not a “real” vacation, cause I’m so busy around the house.  Make sure you hope over to check out some of Holly’s awesome signs she makes!
gail