DIY Upcycled Candle Holder

Sometimes home decor can clash with your new space? DIYers can now give their accessories a makeover with these AMAZING furniture and multi-surface paints and patina products! Our guest blogger, crafter extraordinaire Sharon Harnist, shows us how.

Today's project uses Tommy Art's fabulous Italian-made line of specialty paints and texture products to renew an old candlestick. This pretty 12" candlestick has a larger matching mate, along with a decorative bowl that I've had for over 10 years. While the cream, gold, and

bronze color scheme served me well in my old house, the new house is full of white, gray/silver, and black, so I haven't had a place for them...until now!

Enter Tommy Art Paint! This mineral-based paint dries rapidly, offers superb coverage, opacity, porosity, lightfastness and is available in more than 35 colors! Bonus: the Tommy Art colors adhere to most surfaces without preparation!

(Note to DIYers: I turned bronze and cream candlesticks into silver ones for this post, but I could have easily done exactly the opposite. Tommy makes a wide array of metallic paints, matte colors, and special finishing products that can be mixed and matched to create just about any surface look or texture, opening up ENDLESS upcycling possibilities!)

Step One: Get Covered

Paint a base coat of Tommy Art's Clay (light gray) right over the surface of the candlestick or other home decor piece, without any prep work. Use a stiff brush to work paint into the crevices. The paint covers quickly and completely, in just one coat!

Let dry thoroughly. Since this paint is fast drying, that will take under an hour! Notice the color of the paint doesn't change too much from wet to dry -- if that helps with your project planning.  It may have dried a lot quicker than that (maybe 5 minutes?), but I was off doing some other things and wanted to be sure it was very dry, before the next step...

Step Two: Age Before Beauty

Apply Antiquing Coating (a black semi-transparent acrylic liquid coating) over the surface of the chalk-painted candlestick, working in small areas at a time. You want the antiquing to get into the crevices, so work it in well, using a sponge brush. I tested out my color preference by wiping away some of the coating with a soft cloth at different time intervals. The longer you leave the coating on, the darker the color will "stain" the chalk paint. Quickly rub the coating off, if too much accidentally gets applied.

Let dry thoroughly and don't worry if the coating takes to some parts of the chalk paint better or darker than other areas, I think this adds to the character of the piece. Most of that will be covered up later anyway, and won't be as noticeable.

Step three: A light touch of metallic silver paint

Next, lightly brush Tommy Art Silver Metallic Paint over the raised parts of the design. I used a sponge brush dipped in the paint, then tapped off the excess. You want your brush to be almost dry, to prevent applying too much of the silver paint. Use a light touch, so the silver paint just catches the tops of the design. A little goes a LONG way!

Step four: Buff the entire piece

MY FINAL STEP was to buff the entire piece with a soft cloth.  And that's it, folks -- super easy! You could always opt to add another dimension of color and protectiveness to the project and apply one of Tommy Art's Waxes all over the piece, but I was very happy with these results! Here's the finished candlestick in my studio lighting.