Luminaries from Leftovers

So our new Pottery Barn coffee tables came yesterday and they are beautiful. Spare me any lectures you might have on the cost of Pottery Barn, they were on sale and I got a 10% Registry Completion Discount. I love Pottery Barn and you can't change my mind. Nope, nope, nope!

So anyway, now I have these awesome tables but they looked fabulously ~~naked~~ bare in the middle of our living room.

Looking at them, I knew I needed baskets, mason jars, candles and vase filler, but I didn't have those items lying around the house. **Light Bulb** Why not use some leftover pieces from the wedding?

Enter vellum, glass beads, LED candles, glue dots, and a pair of small square vases that have been hiding in my linen closet since we moved here over three years ago. (Holy cow has it been that long?!) Most of these materials were leftover from the table number luminaries I created for the wedding (shown at right).

I threw together a quick design in Photoshop to print out on the vellum paper. When printing to vellum, be sure to set your printer settings to transparency and let the ink dry before touching the paper (or it will smudge!). Because the circumference of the glass vases is more than 11 inches, I had to piece strips of the vellum together. That's where the glue dots came in. They're a little tricky to use with vellum, but I didn't have any glue sticks lying around, and the glue dots are hard to see when the product is finished.

I filled the vases with the glass beads before inserting the vellum pieces. The beads helped to push the vellum into the corners of the glass and ensure it fit properly. Then, I inserted the LED candles in the middle... and voila! A luminary centerpiece in under 45 minutes... and no more naked table tops.

Please ignore the ~~awesomely~~ bad 80's love seat. The hubster won't part ways with it no matter how convincing I can be.

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