Holiday Almanac December 22: Jewels for your Centerpiece

For more information on the Holiday Almanac, go here. Or to see what I've been up to on past Holiday Almanac days, check out this page.

Oh man, I've been excited about this one since the beginning of the Holiday Almanac project. Household décor projects from the 1950s are always either amazing or terrible, and I was excited to see which one this would be.

But alas, it turned out to be pretty terrible. First I had to find a 'fat white candle,' which was harder than you'd think. When I did find one, it turned out to be a 'church candle,' which I think means I probably shouldn't be using it for tablescaping, but here we are.

Anyway, the instructions said to use melted candle wax to adhere small ornaments to the fat white candle, then set it on a piece of mirror for added sparkle.

But have you ever tried to use melted wax to stick something onto something else? It's not easy. And the bells I found to try to adhere are coated in some kind of plasticky paint that started smoking when I got them too close to the flame, and then the sides of the candle got scorched instead of melting... so here we are.

Never one to give up on a goal, I glued the candle to a mirror tile and piled the bells up around it, and it's just as tacky as it sounds.

Happy Christmas 1959!

the verdict:

1 spoon out of five. This was a miserable failure, but it was still kind of fun to try to do. And I got a church candle out of it, so that's not so bad.