Easy to make and adorable, these tea light snowman ornaments look great!Who would have thought that you could use tea lights from the dollar store to make such a cute Christmas ornament?The “flame” transforms into the carrot nose of the snowman when the tea light is turned on!Discuss lovable!
Unless it was a holiday and the candles were sitting on the dining room table with everyone watching as we ate, my mother never let us burn candles when we were kids.When the holiday dinner was over, we would then quickly light the candles.I don’t know if that’s normal.However, for us, it was absolutely normal.
My mother, being the overprotective, anti-fire person she is, completely introduced me to battery-operated candles.For the past few months, I’ve had a few flameless candles on my mantle, and I love how peaceful they are!Additionally, you can purchase flameless battery operated candles! I don’t know if you’ve seen them!or, at the very least, fake flames that only look real from a distance of a few feet.
For a few months, I had four flameless candles and three faux flame candles on my mantle.When my husband pointed out that our mantle looked like a shrine with all of the candles up there, I was really enjoying them.Ha!I had to find new homes for some of them because he pretty much destroyed the grouping for me.Men!
Although they won’t win any awards for making people believe they have a real flame, these dollar store tea lights are perfect for these tiny snowman ornaments.Did you at any point figure a phony plastic fire could fill in for a snowman nose?I’m sure I didn’t!However, it pretty much resembles a carrot in every way!
Here’s what you’ll need:
- Battery operated tea lights
- A Black Sharpie
- Red Ribbon
- Red Pipe Cleaners
- Red Pom Poms
- Black Felt
- Orange Sharpie
- Glue Gun
Here’s what my tea lights look like from the side. See how the “flame” kind of curves a bit? You’ll want to position the face, so that the flame is pointing up. It just makes for a better looking carrot nose.
Use the black Sharpie to draw a simple face onto the tea light. You can use googly eyes if you want, but I preferred the look of the black dots.
Cut a piece of red pipe cleaner to approximately 2.5″ long.
Curve it around the tea light and then add a small line of hot glue on both ends to hold it in place. Don’t glue it the entire way around because you’ll need to be able to slide the ribbon under the pipe cleaner later.
Add a generous dab of hot glue where the ears would be and add the pom poms. Now your snowman has ear muffs!
Cut out a piece of ribbon to be approximately 4.5″ long. Then cross it over itself like in the picture below and add a small dab of hot glue to hold it together. I found this was the best way to make the ribbon look like a scarf.
Add a small line of glue to the back of the “scarf” like in the picture below:
And then glue it to the back of the tea light like in this picture:
The scarf should naturally pop back to the position shown below without adding more glue.
Cut a piece of the thinner red ribbon to be approximately 11″ long and then slide it under the pipe cleaner.
Then tie a tiny knot in the ribbon to keep it together.
The tea light flame is white when it’s turned off so you’ll probably want to colour it orange with a marker to make it look like a carrot, even when the tea light is turned off.
I definitely recommend using an orange Sharpie for this next part. I didn’t have one, so I had to resort to using one of the kids Crayola markers. It worked for the time being, but it rubs off really easily, so it’s not going to last very long.
Here’s the finished snowman with the ear muffs. So cute!
Since a little variety is always fun, I also made a little snowman with a top hat. I cut a strip of black felt to be approximately 1-1/4″ wide. And then I cut pieces like in the photo below. The ribbon is just a scrap of gift wrapping ribbon I had.
Glue the hat together with some hot glue, so you end up with something like this:
Since there’s no pipe cleaner to hold it in place on this one, you’ll need to glue the ribbon right to the tea light. Add a generous dab of hot glue to the tea light, add the ribbon, and then add another generous dab of hot glue, and it should keep it all in place.
Here’s how the collection looked with the flames turned off. I think the noses would be a much better orange colour if I had used an orange Sharpie instead of a Crayola marker.
And when you turn them on, they look awesome!
I love how cute the happy family of snowmen look!
Don’t forget to write the year on the back with the Sharpie before you finish!
If you can find little magnets that don’t cover the on/off switch on the back, these would also make adorable fridge magnets!
