Easiest DIY Candle Holder Ever

So I was sitting in church the other day and saw a project that I haven’t shared here yet, since it was done prior to the blog!

If you are new here, my twin brother is the pastor at a contemporary church service at a United Methodist Church in Plano, which means I am the go-to any time he needs something built or some little odd job done for the church. So far at the church I’ve built two altar tables, helped redo a stage and I am about to do a fun project for the welcome center (more on that one after it is built!). But a smaller project I did was for the Christmas Eve service two years ago.

On December 23^rd, the worship staff decided that they wanted to add some candlelight on the stage for the duration of the service, but they needed them all to be at different heights. I had an easy solution: I went to grab a couple of cedar 4x4s (they were the only ones untreated at my HD… and I didn’t want treated ones since they would be used indoors).

Before we cut them I took my orbital sander to the full length of board to smooth out the sides because I find it easier to sand when it is one long board and just do the top edges after they are cut. I used my miter saw to cut them into varying lengths: 4”, 6”, 8″ and 12”. If I was trying to be fancy I could have routed around the edges to make them smoother or a decorative edge, but I was on the clock… I needed these guys cut, sanded and stained by that evening to give them the full 24 hour dry time.

After they were cut, AJ and I sanded the tops down to smooth out any rough spots and take away any sharp edges and then set about staining them. I used Minwax’s Dark Walnut because it is what I had on hand.

Here is the facebook picture AJ posted of me trying to madly stain them that evening.

But they looked beautiful on Christmas Eve (I made somewhere around 20 of them) with pillar candles on top of them. And I am so happy that they are still using them! Here is an iphone pic (shockingly enough I don’t carry my SLR camera with me all the time!) of them in use last Sunday.

They are definitely nothing fancy, but they are a great way to add varying heights to any surface. My mom has several that I have made her (and my uncle made her a set a while ago) that she uses for candles or even draped under fabric to add height for other decorations.

You can see a white one in this picture from my post about her nativity scenes to make the angel sit higher on the shelf.