Since we’re in holiday limbo around here (decorating the outside for Christmas and the inside for fall), I wanted to come up with a little “DIY decor” project that could be used for fall or winter. I also had a hankering to try to come up with a project that was completely free, as in, only using things I already had on hand. Thus, the Rustic Glam Votive was born…
This project was super easy, a lot of fun and only took an hour or two. To hop on board the rustic glam train, here’s what you need…
Keep in mind, you want the sticks to be evenly distributed around, so make sure your glass votive has straight sides. The one I used is actually a little larger than your typical votive, so let’s just call it a candle holder. I picked up this candle holder at Crate & Barrel for just a few bucks almost 4 years ago, but rarely (if ever!) used it. So, it was the perfect candidate for a facelift. Any size candle holder will do – even large hurricanes. Ohh, that would be pretty! Now, for the how to!
I started off by taking a little walk in our back yard to collect a few sticks. Our house backs up to sort of an “alley” between the houses that are perpendicular to ours. There are a lot of big trees, which means… a lot of sticks! This is the view from our carport. The yard will be a lot prettier in a week or two when the leaves are at their peak. Right now, it’s in the ugly awkward stage.
Once I gathered a good amount of sticks, I cut them down using a set of small shears. Because of the fall weather, the sticks were really dry, so this process was super easy. I held each stick up to the side of the candle holder to get an idea of where to cut. Other than that, there was no exact measuring involved because I didn’t want them to be completely uniform. After all, I was going for “rustic”.
The number of sticks that fit inside the candle holder ended up being the perfect amount to go around it. I don’t know if there’s any mathmatical reasoning behind this (for that, you’ll have to ask Greg), but that’s a good rule of thumb to use if you’re trying to figure out how many sticks you need to cut down.
After all of the sticks were cut, now time for an oil rubbed bronze spray painting session. I just lined them up on a piece of cardboard and went to town. I hit some a little harder than others to have some color variation (which resulted in getting some paint on the grass). One thing I love about spray paint (especially metallic spray paints like this) is that it dries so fast. Within a few minutes, they were dry and ready for the next step.
Using a foam brush, I started to apply the gold craft paint to each stick. This didn’t take as long as it seems – probably only about 10 minutes tops. But it was a little messy, haha. A little bit of paint goes a long way. You just need a tiny dab to give the stick a gold shimmer with the ORB undertones. Since I wanted to have some color variation between the sticks, some of them got a little more gold paint and on a few, I didn’t add any gold paint at all. If you want to skip the glam and just have a “Rustic ORB Candle Holder”, you can skip this step all together.
This is where I lost natural light, so that’s why the color in the photo is all weird. I started off by gluing the largest sticks evenly around the votive. By gluing them on first and evenly spaced, that assured me it would look even overall once I was finished. Once the big boys were in place, I just started to fill in the gaps with sticks one by one. Each stick only needs a small bead of hot glue along the center of the stick – top to bottom. You don’t want to look down in the candle holder and see a bunch of messy blobs of glue, so, the less the better.
A little glue here, a little glue there…. we’re done!
I love how this can totally go fall or winter. For fall, you could pair this with some leaves or a few baby pumpkins for a simple centerpiece. For winter, pair it with some holly berry branches or faux snow (which is how I’m excited to use it in a few weeks!).
I really love the whole “rustic glam” aesthetic. The pictures don’t really show it, but with the texture of the stick and the gold paint, some of the sticks look gilded. Pretty cool for a free project.
It looks so pretty at night, too! I’m thinking about making a few more for our Christmas party this year. That is, if we decide to go with the “rustic glam Christmas” theme. I’m having a hard time deciding between that and “fun vintage Christmas”. Oh, the things I waste brain power on!
Speaking of fall, check out my post over on Wayfair’s blog today! We’re talking pumpkins ; )
