Christmas Candles

What happens when you are begging for gift ideas, strapped for cash, and scrambling for time? Pinterest- that's what happens. I decided to troll my friends Pinterest pages for gift ideas this year and came up with quite a few cool projects to tackle this Christmas.

Cinnamon Stick Christmas Candle

This was a pretty easy project, and the most time consuming part was cutting the cinnamon sticks to the appropriate size. Depending on the candle and whether you use a 50% off coupon at Michael's, the candle could run close to 10$ each. But it's cuteness is worth it.

Gather your supplies. You will need:

A candle (I chose red for this blog, but I also used white ones. FInd them cheap at Ross, TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and Home Goods or use the 50% coupon at Michael's and get them for a steal.)

Bag of cinnamon sticks (also at Michael's, enough in 1 bag to do 1 1/4 candles)

Christmas ribbon

Burlap string

Hot glue gun

Cutting board and serated knife (how I cut the cinnamon sticks)

Steps:

1. Cut the cinnamon sticks to varying lengths, ranging from 3/4 of the way up the candle to about a little 1/2 way up the candle. See picture above. This gives it a staggered look. The best way to cut the sticks without shredding them to pieces is to put the stick on a cutting board and carefully scoring it with the serated knife. Then GENTLY snap the stick in two and repeat with next stick.

2. Once you've cut varying sizes, line them up side by side to visualize what it will look like on the candle. 

3. Begin gluing them onto the candle using the hot glue gun. 

4. Once finished, it should look something like this.

5. Glue the Christmas ribbon on and tie the burlap string around in a bow. DONE! 

I paired it with some Christmas bark for a nice gift to girlfriends. 

Let me know what you think!