Inspired By: Dura-Lar Luminaries

As I mentioned before, I've been wanting to actually try out some of the projects I pin on Pinterest.  This week, I decided to tackle this one:

One of the reasons I chose this project is because I had all the supplies on hand: stencils, paint, and Dura-Lar.  I even had the battery operated candles in my stash!

I ended up not using a gelatin plate, as the caption under the photo seems to recommend (the pin, unfortunately, leads to a dead page).  Instead, I used a makeup wedge to stencil onto the Dura-Lar -- btw: If you're not familiar with Dura-Lar it's a plastic meant to take wet media.

I chose to leave some blank Dura-Lar so that when I wrapped it around the candle, the plastic would overlap without the design overlapping that much.  Tip: I used a binder clip to hold the Dura-Lar in place so that I could take a step back and look at it.

I used a combination of stenciling and painting to make my designs.  I even did a bit of finger painting!

Here they are with candles in them -- you'll see that I did some layering in order to take advantage of the clear Dura-Lar:

After doing the circles, I thought it might be fun to try a square version.  For all the candle holders I used regular clear tape to close them up! 

I love how you can really see the pattern where the white candle is.  I thought about cutting the plastic down so that it was mostly white candle and then I had an idea...

I added a crumpled piece of deli paper (last photo).  It's not a real candle, so there's no worry about the paper and the translucent nature of deli paper allows the light from the candle through!

Again, because of the clear nature of the Dura-Lar, you can layer all kinds of things.  I wanted more color, so I decided to try different colors of painted deli paper wrapped around the candle.  I added some multicolored fringed ribbon and strung on some jewelry charms that I had on hand.  

This is a super easy way to use up little things that have been hanging out in your stash forever!

With a little bit of layering, I think you could probably re-use these luminaries for a variety of different events!

Thanks for stopping by!

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P.S. The stencils I used in this post are:

Faithful Tree

Plaid Fringe

Script Words

Spring Medallion

Texture Love