Castle Tea Lights

I love castles.

Is that because I majored in English in college and read a lot of Shakespeare? Possibly.

Is it because little girls dream that Prince Charming will sweep them away to live happily ever after in a castle?

Naw. I don’t recall ever having that fantasy . . .

However, I know that my llitle granddaughter, Natalie, is into princesses. She knows them by name and and can recognize which princess is which.

This made me think it would be fun to make some castle tea lights. Here’s what I came up with.

I went to the Creative Commons site where you can find free pictures to use. I found a picture of a castle that I liked and gave it a sepia tone in Photoshop.

I printed the picture.

I cut out the castle.

With an Exacto knife and a cutting board, I cut out some of the windows. (When you do this with your wee little grandchildren, be sure that you cut out the windows.)

I taped the two ends together.

Ta da! Here is the finished castle.

I cut out two castles (because I bought a package of two battery-powered tea lights). Do you see the differences between them?  I was lazy when I cut out the one on the right and I didn’t cut out the turrets. It doesn’t look very ‘castle-like’ does it?

This is what the castle tea light looked like with the lights turned out.

That turned out pretty cool even if I do say so myself!

This is so easy peasy to make that you could make a castle tea light with a grandchild in ten minutes or less — especially since I’ve done all of the work of finding a castle picture and giving it a sepia tone (to make it look old).

So without much ado about nothing (did you catch the Shakespeare reference?) here’s the castle tea light pattern so that you can make a whole gaggle of them.

Wondering what you can do with your castle tea lights once you’ve made them? Here are a few ideas. Use them:

• As mood lighting for a tea party with your grandchildren.
• For a night light when a grandchild sleeps over.
• When your grandchild ‘performs’ piano recital pieces on your piano.
• For a ‘candlelight’ supper with your grandchildren.
• When a granddaughter has a prom date and fixes dinner for her date before the dance.
• When you snuggle and read stories to a grandchild.
• When your grandchildren play dress-ups and then dance in their fancy duds.
• On the patio on a summer evening.
• On the edge of the ‘stage’ when grandchildren dress up and perform skits.
• For a grandchild’s birthday party.
• At family reunions.

The sky’s the limit. Use your creativity!

You know, you could also use different pictures instead of castles: a birthday cake with candles, a snowman, animals, your grandchild’s pet, fancy cars, airplanes, princesses, cartoon characters, Valentine hearts, flags.