Waterscape Candle Holders – West Elm Knock Off

Here we are again back with another fun knock off. As some of you have seen I’ve got a lot of fun built ins, in my house and one of the things I’ve struggled with is having fun and interesting things to put on them. Today’s knock off is such a cool technique and I can’t wait to use it on a few other things in the future. The original inspiration was this really pretty watercolor candle holder from West Elm. Now while $6 isn’t too bad I knew I could do better.

I started off with a few of these glass vases. I used these in our wedding 3 years ago and have been packing them around with me for every move since. If you don’t happen to have your wedding vases laying around you can pick up these exact ones at the dollar store. You can also use any glass container you have around; jam jars, spaghetti sauce jars, etc.

I wasn’t sure what technique would work best, so I tried a different one for each glass.  For the first one I mixed  food coloring and mod podge and stir them together until they were completely combined. I used a foam brush and painted the inside of the entire jar.

For the second glass I decided to mix mod podge and a little bit of regular craft paint.  I mixed them together until they were totally combined and then painted the inside of the entire jar.

For the third glass I tried something a little different.  I used some of the light blue chalky finish paint I had left over from my kitchen backsplash.  I used a foam brush to dab the paint completely covering the inside of the glass.

I let them all dry for about 30 minutes. At this point I had some interesting results…  I decided to add a second coat to the inside of all of them.  I added a thin coat of the chalky finish paint to the inside of both the food coloring and paint ones.  This really let the streaks shine through and made them look a little more wood grainy in my opinion.

For the chalky finish one I decided to try something a little unorthodox.  I took my food coloring and dropped it directly on my foam brush.  I then brushed this over the paint, which because it wasn’t fully dry caused it to get an almost exact match to the waterscape candle holders I was going for!

You will want to wait for a few hours to make sure your paints and layers are all completely dry, but once they are you can add your favorite tea light to the inside and enjoy its beauty. If you’re like me and keep a stash of glass jars and vases laying around this project will cost you nothing. Otherwise it’s $1 & up.  I knew I could beat that $6 price tag! 😉