Decorate your own Candle Holders

These custom candle holders are the perfect accent for your garden party and make an excellent rainy day activity for children, even though we haven't had had too many days like that here in New Jersey yet this summer. I always keep extra candles on hand in case we loose our power and these are very inexpensive to pick up at the supermarket. I made the floral drawing with markers on a sheet of copy paper and then ran my original through the printer. I adhered my copies to the glass candle holder with Mod Podge and then sealed it with an extra topcoat.

Make a Table

My husband, John, and I made this this table from materials that we had lying around the attic and basement. I was looking for a type of pedestal to display some sculptures for an exhibit of children's art work and we came up with this table idea. John cut the base and top of the table from scraps of plywood using a bandsaw. The pedestal is the tubing that rugs are wrapped around and are frequently available, free for the asking, from a carpeting store. They are extremely sturdy, about eight feet long and require a small hand saw to cut them to the desired length. I had planned on using a hot glue gun to adhere the top and base to the pedestal, but John came up with the idea of cutting wood circles that would attach to the base and top and "plug" into the hollow tubing. My little drawing illustrates the concept. After assembling I collaged items from the newspaper, pages from our son's math notebook and whatever tickled my fancy to the surface using Mod Podge. As you can see, I've put it to use holding some of my art supplies and it's convenient that it is the same height as my drafting table. (It worked well for the show, too.)

Collage Flowers on Canvas

This is a fun project to use up scraps of paper or fabric. For this collage I started with a pre-stretched canvas square. I painted in the sky blue background with acrylic paint. Remember to paint the sides of the canvas to give it a finished look. I collected a variety of printed materials that I found appealing including pages from an atlas, scrap booking paper, and pages from the newspaper. I used a glue stick to assemble the flowers on sheets of white paper. I made copies of the flowers using my printer and then glued the copies with white glue to the canvas. There's no reason that you couldn't glue your original flowers directly on the canvas. I covered the entire surface with Mod Podge and to add some dimension I glued the buttons on top. Burlap, felt and even sheet music are other fun ideas to add interest to the piece.

Tile Art

For this project I doodled the floral surface design on a pale green sheet of paper. I made a copy of my design using my printer. With Mod Podge I glued the copy to a very inexpensive ceramic tile from Home Depot. The tiles are a little over 4 inches square and less than 20 cents each. I also added a coat of Mod Podge on top of the copy to make it glossy. This is a great project to do with crayon drawings. You can either adhere the crayon drawing directly to the tile or make color copies.