PILLAR CANDLES

What you will need:

Cardboard tubes (like toilet paper, wrapping paper, paper towel tubes)

Scrap cardboard

Newspaper

Glue/Water for paper mache

Hot glue

Acrylic paint

Electric tea light candles

First you'll want to start by tracing a circle using your tubes on the scrap cardboard.  Cut this piece out and slide it into the tube and secure in place with hot glue.  Make sure to use your tea lights as a guide as to how far the cardboard circle should go in because you want the flame part to be visible.

After you do this, take a piece of newspaper and measure it to fit the tube.  I only did one layer of paper per tube.  Make sure to make it long enough to fold over the top of the tube where the cardboard circle is secured.  Also, for good measure, I stuff the tube with newspaper to make it more sturdy.  

I paper mached the tube but I did it a little different than the usual technique.  I painted on a layer of the glue and water mixture, then wrapped the paper on the tube, then did another layer of the glue and water mixture on the outside.

After the paper dries, get out your hot glue gun.  Use it to make "wax" dripping down from the top of the candle.  Simply move it from the top down the tube and decide how far you want the drips to go down.  Do this all the way around the top of the tube, or not, up to you!

Sorry the hot glue is hard to see in the picture.  As you can tell, I made several of these.  After the hot glue hardens, just paint the whole thing and let it dry.  Bam, you're done!  It's ready to have the tea light turned on  and placed inside the top of the tube.

Now, I grouped these together and hot glued them to each other.  But you could easily attach these to a candle holder.  That's what I did with this next one.  I found the candle holder at a thrift store for a $1.

Have fun!  You can make as many or as few as you want.  They're so easy and cheap.  You can get creative and add glitter or glaze or whatever your heart desires.  And with them being electric, no risk of fire!