Our home is decorated in a coastal cottage style. Many of the home decor accents and accessories are ones that I’ve personally made. I like unique items, not the cookie cutter stuff that I find in retail stores. Our dining room needed some ambiance lighting, so I decided to make my own coastal cottage candle lantern. I decided to hit the thrift store to find a vessel for my new creation.
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From the local thrift store I purchased a gently-used Bath and Body Works glass candle holder lantern. It had a little bit of wax inside it and some light soot on the glass. To remove the soot…I used a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. It removed it with ease! I then peeled out the little bit of wax. I then gave it a good washing using Dawn Platinum Powerwash Dish Soap Spray. Dawn does a great job at removing dirt, grease, grime and debris. Rinse with clean water and towel dry.
I keep a lot of beach items in my crafting stash. From my stash….I used real beach sand, tiny seashells, starfish and pieces of aqua and turquoise colored sea glass. To add a little bit of color I did paint some of the seashells with metallic paint in aqua and dark turquoise.
First I put in the beach sand. covering about 2″ of the bottom. I then placed the metal candle holder back inside. Next…putting in all of the seashells, sea glass and the star fish. You don’t want to make it over-crowded or too sparse…so play around with it to get the right combination of things. You want to be able to see the sand and the items you placed in there without them laying on top of one another.
Next was the Flameless Pillar Candle. The one that I used is made out of real wax, has a realistic flame and has a timer feature. Once it got dark outside….I turned the pillar candle on to set the time. It will remain on for 6 hours and then automatically turn off. Every night it will turn on again at the same time. I LOVE using Flameless Candles around our home!
This costal cottage beach style candle lantern turned out fantastic! The ONLY thing I purchased was the gently used glass candle lantern (from the thrift store) and a flameless pillar candle from Amazon. Everything else I already had on hand. Super easy to make and it looks beautiful in our home.