re-created candle holders from the repurposed sign company blog

We’ve all seen them.

Small single wooden candlesticks at the thrift shop that get no respect, left to stand lonely on the shelves month after month. Well, we decided to do something about it, and here’s a little sneak peek.

We bought an entire village of them and got to work.

Then we started stacking them.

We actually love the mix of woods, but it wasn’t the final look we were going for on this project. So we started painting. To avoid the crazy time it would take to sand all of these curves, we mixed our own chalk paint. We’ve all seen the recipes so I’ll spare you yet another. But we actually just did a ‘mix it by eye’ type of measurement and got to work.

This next step is what we call the ‘ugly stage’. We painted the first base color using a dry brush technique. You just gotta give them a little love and understanding while they stand there and dry in this state of being. It’s quite humiliating for them.

The dry brush technique is quite easy. Just dab off as much of the paint as you can from your brush before you start painting. We wanted the sideways brush strokes, so for us it was a spin and brush process – and we made a quick little video for you to see what we mean.

Unfortunately, the next painting stage doesn’t do much to boost their ego either. We forgot to snap a pic until we had all but one of them already painted with the 3rd level of teal. So, here’s the one.

We like the teal color so much we think our next set will be a teal exterior. But for now, this is the painting stage before the final coat of paint.

Time for the final reveal. Ta-dah!

What a difference a day makes. Actually, it was two. But that’s still a pretty good transformation in a short amount of time. We saw the potential right away when we started stacking.