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23rd Mar 2015

It’s DIY interiors time: These purse-friendly concrete tealight holders take 5 minutes

Welcome to our new DIY corner. Time to get those creative juices going...

Eimear Ruane

More dash than cash? Yep, that sounds familiar alright. If you can’t buy it, make it, we say. This is the perfect little creation to unleash a bit of creativity and knock the baby-brain right out of you. Make them for a cheap-and-cheerful gift or just enjoy crafting something from scratch. It’s super-therapeutic. Time to get your DIY on.

What you need

  • Concrete – I used Jetcem Rapid Setting Sand and Cement 2kg (€8.79 in Woodies and available from most hardware stores or Co-ops)

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  • A plastic spoon and cup for mixing (one you will never need for anything other than cement)
  • A dry measuring spoon (I used a scoop from an infant formula tin)
  • Empty cartons – I used yoghurt ones
  • Used Tea light
  • Mask to cover your mouth to avoid inhaling dust from the cement mix

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Method

  1. Have all your materials to hand and ready to go, the cement sets very quickly.
  2. Mix 3 parts cement to 1 part water and use the plastic spoon to mix it into a thick paste.
  3. Pour it into the yoghurt cartoon tapping regularly to exclude air bubbles.
  4. Push the empty tea light holder gently into the cement mixture, tap the carton a few times to even out the top edges. I put some coins in the tea light holder to give it some weight.
  5. Leave for about one hour then gently cut off the yoghurt carton and remove the tea light holder insert. The cement is still crumbly at this stage so you can smooth out any bits you want. Or don’t, it’s not really supposed to look perfect!
  6. Leave overnight and voila.
  7. You can play around with different containers and different types of candles. For the long candle I set it in the cement once it had set a little bit (about 5 minutes) and it was easy to pull out once the concrete had fully set.

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Eimear is a mum of two small ladies and wife to the one man. She blogs from Cork about DIY, style, beauty, travel and life with small girls. Find her at www.thetwodarlings.com