Christmas Limes, Apples and Candles

I have never been much of a decorator, but now that I have my own apartment, I enjoy doing little things to decorate for the seasons.  I would love to do even more, but I am taking baby steps.

With Christmas getting a bit closer, I decided to do a cute take on the traditional red and green.  I wanted to use real fruit, but I decided that would be expensive and would eventually go bad.  Instead, I ended up buying plastic miniature limes and red apples.  Each container was $6 (from Fred Meyer) but I got more than enough and they will last forever.  I filled up my hurricane jar with them, and it looks adorable.  Great for winter, but isn't in-your-face Christmas-y.

My hurricane jar also has a candle holder on the top, so I decided to jazz up a plain candle.  To do so, I bought a white pillar candle ($5.50), permanent double stick tape, and gold glitter.  Whilst DIY-ing, I was also watching GLEE and drinking white wine/cranberry juice, so it is safe to say it was a great night.

I added the double stick tape to the candle in stripes.  If you are a perfectionist, it would be better to measure out the spacing of your stripes, but I just freestyled it.  Different sizes would also look great and would help disguise any mistakes because the spacing would be less noticeable.

From there, I held the candle over a large bowl and poured the glitter over it, turning the candle as I did so.  I manually added glitter to spots that looked a little sparse.  It would probably be easier to put some paper in your bowl, so you can fold the paper and pour the leftover glitter somewhere.  I lost a lot transferring from bowl to container.  After that, I set the candle on the counter and used my finger to wipe away any glitter that had remained not stuck to the tape - this part was surprisingly easy.

Now I have my candle displayed on top of my hurriance jar and I think it looks really festive and store-bought.  You can barely tell I made it.  The really cool thing this is you can continue to customize your candle to match different holidays/seasons by using different color glitter and/or different colored candles.  The tape comes off just fine.

I also think this would be really cute if you used a hot glue gun to draw designs and stick glitter into the glue (like stars).  You wouldn't be able to change the design, but I think you could make some really awesome stuff.