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I love candles and the illumination they project. I would love it if my entire house was filled with candlelight. When decorating my house for fall, I realized that I did not have a nice looking centerpiece for my living room coffee table. Fall is my favorite season after all. I needed to go all out on the coziness and overall feeling in my home for the season. However, I didn’t want to spend a huge amount on something brand new, so I turned to my crafting stash for a solution. It was time for a DIY fall centerpiece.
Upcycling bonus!
The amount of baby food jars that we had piling up was also giving me a little bit of stress. I recycle every single one of them, but I also wanted to find another solution where they would be reused. That’s when it hit me that a tea light might fit in them. I tried it out, and I was correct. They made perfect lanterns for tea lights! You can use any class container that is small enough and allows a tea light to fit in it. It doesn’t have to be a baby food jar. This was just what I used, but you can use anything that works for you. An idea started to come together then..
Gathering supplies…
In order to avoid buying a ton of materials right away, I took a gander at my crafting inventory. I had some faux fall plants, a tray from Dollar General, acrylic paint, and baking soda. I also had my trusty hot glue gun and hot glue sticks.
I painted the tray to give it this tan color. This is what it looked like before:
I happened to have all these materials on hand. However, everything can be found at the Dollar Tree or Dollar General. The acrylic paint that I used was from Michaels or Hobby Lobby. These I happened to have on hand, but you can get acrylic paint almost at any craft store or superstore.
I now had all my materials, and putting together the DIY fall centerpiece was super easy! The project was able to completed in about a day overall. The longest part was waiting for materials to dry.
Suggestions
My first suggestion would be to make sure you eliminate the entire label on the baby food jar. How I did this was mix together equal parts cooking oil and baking soda. I then spread it on the sticky label leftovers and left it on overnight. I cleaned them off the next day, and it left a perfect canvas!
Second, when assembling this centerpiece would be to lay everything out before gluing it all together. I laid it all out exactly how I wanted it to look for making it permanent by gluing it all together. This was a huge help when it came to figuring out how I wanted it to look overall.
Lastly, when painting the baby food jars or whatever container you use, making sure to put multiple coats of paint on. This will ensure that there is no clear glass peaking through when the tea lights are lit.
You also will absolutely need to make sure that the previous coat you put on the jar is COMPLETELY dry before moving onto the next coat. If it is not, the previous coat will peel off, making everything very difficult when painting. This happened while I was painting the tray, and I ended up having to spray paint it because it did not give me the effect I had wanted. However, the spray paint did give it a nice pottery effect that ended up looking really good.
Make sure that whatever container you use can fit the tea lights before you begin painting.
DIY Fall Centerpiece
Materials:
- Dollar General or Dollar Tree Tray
- Clean baby food jars or any small glass container that fits tea lights
- tea lights
- Faux flowers of your choice from Dollar Tree
- Cooking oil
- Hot glue sticks
- Hot glue gun
- acrylic paint
- baking soda
- paint brushes
- optional: spray paint.
Step 1: Clean your jars
Take the label off of your jars if they have one. If you can’t get the residue from the label off, I highly suggest this next method. Mix together equal parts of the cooking oil and baking soda. I did a tablespoon of each, and it was more than enough for 5 jars. Leave it for a few hours or overnight, and wash off the mixture. It’ll leave a perfectly clean canvas for crafting!
Step 2: Paint jars and tray if desired
I mixed together the acrylic paint and baking soda until I had the consistency I desired. You want more paint than baking soda or the paint will not easily spread and adhere to the jar. I did three coats on all of my jars. However big your centerpiece will be depending on how many jars you use. You can use as many as you want. Just make sure they are all equally painted with the same amount of paint. Wait until each coat fully dries before moving on to the next.
When painting the tray, you can just spray paint it, or use the baking soda and acrylic paint method. It is up to you. I started with painting it with baking soda and acrylic paint, but I did not like how it was turning out. I spray painted it overtop, and it looked really good afterwards. Spray painting over the baking soda gave it even more of a pottery effect than what I was expecting. If you want, you can use both methods!
Step 3: Gather materials and lay everything out
I suggest laying everything out for your DIY fall centerpiece before gluing everything down. This makes things so much easier when it comes to putting it all together.
Step 4: Glue everything!
This is the fun but scary part! Now it’s time to glue everything down with your hot glue and glue gun. Take your time with this step, because you already took the time to lay everything out. You don’t want to mess things up as you are gluing each part. Wait for everything to dry before you move on.
Step 5: Add tea lights
I picked up my tea lights from Dollar Tree. You can get them pretty much any where that sells home decor. Once you centerpiece is dry, add a tea light into each jar. Light them with a lighter or match. Please use caution when doing so.
And that’s it! You now have a BEAUTIFUL fall centerpiece that you made all by yourself with budget friendly materials. 🙂
I hope you all enjoyed this DIY fall centerpiece tutorial! Make sure to continue following along to see more creative and DIY projects! 🙂