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8 Easy DIY Wood Candle Holders for Some Rustic Warmth This Fall

Fall is on its way, and sooner than you know it, you’ll all be needing to turn on the heat in your home once again. Given that the colder weather can sometimes make it a little less pleasant to enjoy the outdoors, a great DIY project for you to bring a little of the outdoors back inside is a candle holder made out of logs, sticks, or twigs. It’s a super simple idea that adds a nice bit of rustic warmth to any room when it’s a little too chilly to go outside. Take a look and see which style you like best!

Birch Wood Logs

Perhaps one of the simplest ways to turn an ordinary tea light into something elegant and rustic is by heading out into a wooded area and looking for a good-sized birch tree (preferably already dying, broken, or fallen down) that you can cut up and drill little pockets for tea lights to sit. Oleander and Palm shows you how to make these.

Birch wood candle holder
A tea light fits right inside the birch wood

Dipped in Gold

Similar to the above project, you could do the same for almost any type of wood you like. A neat way to dress these candle holders up is to dip the bases in gold — and it’s a great idea for the upcoming holiday season! A blog post that was published on Etsy details all the steps for doing this.

Gold dipped log candle holders

Glass and Twigs

If you can’t find any large logs to use for candle holders, you can get a similar look by purchasing some candles that come in plain glass holders so that you can glue some smaller twigs around it. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but you can see this project on Instructables.

Twig candle holder
A twig candle holder is a super easy DIY project

A Fallen Birch Log Look

As an alternative to the first suggestion in this list, which uses birch logs standing vertically, you can cut them into longer pieces and drill tea light pockets into the sides of the bark, for a longer and shorter candle holder. The end result is a candle holder that almost mimics the look of some pieces of a birch tree that has fallen naturally. These would be great on a table for a holiday event! Find out how to do it from Make+Haus.

Birch log candle holder for tea lights
Birch candle holders make a wonderful addition to a dining table

Interesting Pieces of Driftwood

Driftwood comes in all sorts of interesting shapes and sizes, which you can take advantage of by drilling tea light pockets into different levels of the wood. It’s easy enough to do this on your own, but there are lots of Etsy shops that sell them. FlotsamJetsamCrafts and CasaExpressions are just two stores to take a look at.

Large driftwood candle holder
Small natural piece of beach driftwood holding two candles

Hollow with Hearts

If you or someone you know is handy with the power tools, you can go beyond the average tea light pocket in a piece of wood and hollow out a few logs. Once that’s done, you can carefully carve out some shapes in the sides and place a tea light or other type of candle (ideally protected with a glass holder) inside the log for the light to shine through. [Photos from Cuded]

Hollowed out logs with heart shapes cut out of the sides
The light can shine through the cutout hearts in the wood

Large Logs Split in Half

This is a really cool idea if you don’t have a fireplace. Just grab a larger than average log, saw it down the middle, and drill some tea light pockets on the inside for a rustic candle holder that’s comparable to the look of a small fireplace. You could even flip it over and drill the tea light pockets into the bark instead. A few Etsy stores sell these as well. Check out BlizzCraftandBrazen and ZwoodZ for pieces like these.

Split log with candles on the inside
Split log with candle holders on the outer bark side

Exquisite Driftwood Candelabras

Are you looking for something a little more intricate, but still rustic and ideally made of wood? Then you have to check out these amazing candelabras made out of pieces of driftwood, from Drifting Concepts on Etsy. They come in all sorts of different sizes and types of wood.

Driftwood candelabra
Votive candles lit on a driftwood candelabra

Elise Moreau

I write for decoist.

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