DIY Candle Planter Centerpiece

Our DIY candle planter centerpiece adds the perfect final touch to an outdoor summer dining table. It looks great with LED fairy lights and candles too!

It’s finally warm enough to eat dinner outside on our deck. Nothing beats filling ourselves with grilled meat and veggies while listening to the nightly chorus of frogs looking for love, the symphony of cicadas and crickets battling for treeline sound domination, the babbling of our small waterfall and the yapping of Handan.

But there’s just one problem.

The farmhouse table I built last year has a lot of unused real estate when it’s just two or three of us dining on it. There’s just too much empty wood!

Kinda like my head.

I tried to think of ways to fill the unused space, but it seems my babes isn’t as keen on having a dancing and juggling court jester as I am.

I tried to make her understand that dinner theater has a long and storied tradition here in America.

She just gave me The Look.

You know the one.

She didn’t buy it one bit when I carefully explained that our jester could read Shakespeare as well. Just think of all that Barish could learn during his summer meals!

Wouldn’t she think of the children?

“Won’t someone please think of The Children?” I pleaded to the heavens.

The Look.

Fine.

No jester.

Whatever.

It wasn’t really my first choice, anyway. I just wanted her to think that it was my first choice, hehehe.

Nope, my real first choice to fill that vast and lonely expanse of herringbone farmhouse tabletop was a small fountain.

I know, right? It’s an awesome idea!

A beautiful hand-sculpted bust of yours truly mounted inside a large marble bowl on a rotating base. Water would gently trickle out of my ears, nose and mouth while flashing, multi-colored LED strobe lights play across my serene and smiling face. As an added bonus that I figured Handan would love, I was planning to mount small speakers within my sculpture’s chest cavity that would pump out a never-ending playlist of Turkish techno and contemporary Indian pop.

But did my babes share my enthusiasm?

Hmph.

“Okay, well I’m fresh out of ideas!” I said. “What do you think we should put there, Miss Smarty Pants?”

“I know exactly what we’ll put there my babes.” She said.

(Damn! Why does she always have to know??)

“You’re going to make a candle planter centerpiece, my babes, and it’s going to look awesome!” She proceeded to explain her idea.

(Damn! Why does she always have to be right??)

“Actually, you’ll make two. We’ll use the other one in the seating area.” With the plan set, we headed out for supplies.

DIY Candle Planter Centerpiece

• Large terra cotta pot and/or planter
• Small terra cotta pot to fit inside the large pot/planter
• Hurricane glass
• White crushed stone (we bought ours from the Dollar Store, but if you don’t have a Dollar Store near by, you can get it from Amazon)
• Potting soil
• Assorted flowers
• Solar LED lights, LED candles or real candles

We bought our flowers from Lowe’s, the terra cotta pots from Ocean State Job Lot and the hurricane glass from Goodwill. Thrift stores and Goodwill are the best places we’ve found for a consistent supply of inexpensive hurricane glass.

Since this project involves dirt, it’s best tackled outside, so you don’t have to try too hard to be neat. Bonus!

I started with the terra cotta planter. We’d seen some pics on Pinterest of single-pot candle planter centerpieces. Handan thought that the triple-bulge planter would look even better!

First things first. I peeled off the price tag. Made in Vietnam – awesome!! 🙂

Next, I placed a smaller clay pot inside the middle of the planter.

I then filled the small pot with crushed white stone.

By the way, I partially plugged the drain holes with pebbles to slow the drainage.

I then poured in some potting soil and made sure I packed it in tight around the smaller clay pot.

For this planter, Handan thought that both sides should have the same flowers. We agreed that some pink calibrachoa would look great.

I tore off the end of the roots so it would fit properly into the planter.

One side in…

And the other.

I filled in with more potting soil until the planter was almost full.

From here, you have a few options. You can go for a real candle, and LED candle or some solar LED string lights.

Ta-DA!

Or…

For our next DIY candle planter centerpiece, we used a big clay planter bowl.

So there I was, waiting patiently for my photographer (aka my babes) to pay attention to the serious matter at hand, but she was too busy snapping pictures of Pepper rolling around in the grass. I decided to give her a subtle British 2-finger salute while I waited. 😀

Any time I need to be photographed outside, you can be sure of two things:

1. Pepper will photobomb my serious work by rolling around and pointing her scrawny little dog butt at anyone and everyone.
2. My babes will be there to take a few dozen pictures of Pepper’s compromising positions.

When the show ended, we got back to work.

I placed the smaller pot in the bigger and filled around it with some soil to keep it in place.

Next, I filled the pot with crushed white stone and then placed the hurricane glass on top.

I secured the glass by filling around its outside with small crushed stone.

As with the previous candle planter centerpiece, I filled with rest of the large terra cotta pot with an assortment of red and pink calibrachoa, yellow perchoa and some coleus. Yes, coleus grows big, but it looks awesome with the flowers. When it outgrows this centerpiece, we’ll pull it out, plant it elsewhere and replace it.

I filled in the gaps with extra soil from breaking the root ends.

For this larger version, we thought a candle would get lost, so we went with the LED solar fairy lights.

And that’s it! These DIY candle planter centerpieces couldn’t be easier to make! Let’s take a look at the beauty shots.

They really come into their own at dusk!

If you like solar garden lights or outdoor lighting in general, then we have some other easy and popular projects that you’re going to love! Click on the picture below to see the DIY spilling solar lights.

Or maybe you’d like a wreath version of it? Click here to see our lighted garden hose wreath!

Or perhaps you’d like to see how we made these cedar cube solar landscape lights. They’re very easy and affordable to make, and they look great in any garden!

Or if you’re looking for something a little more unique, check out our most popular outdoor project – DIY Waterdrop Solar Lights!

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