From the start, I felt that artificial mood lighting will look out of place in a country-style wedding. Using candles would’ve been the perfect solution. But I knew, based from experience, that our wedding falls on one of the windiest months of the year, not to mention that our reception will be held atop a small hill. Saying that it would be windy is an understatement. I needed something more safe and less of a fire hazard.

Help came in the form of flickering LED tea lights.

The next concern was to find a lamp or candleholder to complement the theme that I was trying to put together. But for me — and for this wedding — it’s not a question of where to look but how to do it. And a trip to a craft store gave me the idea to create my DIY popsicle lamps. Here’s how I did it.

Materials:

• Popsicles sticks
• Tracing, wax, parchment or any translucent paper. Ordinary bond paper doesn’t diffuse the light very well.
• Glue sticks and glue gun
• Liquid glue
• Rugby or resin glue
• Any elastic band
• Cutter and scissors

Procedure 1: Create the Panels

1. Break some of the popsicle sticks in half.

2. Cut the tracing paper. Width is as wide as half of a popsicle stick. Length is about 2 cm shorter than a popsicle stick.

3. Create a frame using two long and two short popsicle sticks. It’s easier if you’ll use a cardboard template (which I glued to a newspaper sheet to keep it steady) such as this:

Use a hot glue for this process because liquid glue takes too long to dry.

Place the short sticks on top of the long ones.

4. Repeat steps 1-3 until you have enough frames. One lamp will need 4 panels, so just multiply the number of lamps by 4 to determine how many frames you need to make.

5. Glue the paper onto the frame like this:

Use a liquid glue for this one so you’ll have more time to position the paper in place. Water-based glue will cause the papers to wrinkle, try to straighten them out before they dry out completely.

Here’s a shot of my completed panels:

Procedure 2: Assemble the Lamp

1. Take two panels and glue them together using a resin glue or rugby. Hot glue dries too fast while liquid glue doesn’t stick too well in wood.

2. Repeat the same for the remaining sides.

3. Once you’ve glued all sides together, you can use elastic bands to hold the lamp while the rugby or glue sets in.

4. You can also put an optional criss-cross brace at the base of the lamp to keep it in shape and to serve as platform for the candle or LED tea light.

And that’s it, your DIY popsicle lamp is ready:

Due to its lightweight materials that can easily tip over and catch fire, use it with real candles only when your event will be held indoors. Otherwise, like what we did, use LED tea lights instead. When placed inside, they glow like real candles, especially the flickering ones. And they come in different colors too–perfect when you have a color motif to match.

Cost:

• 1 popsicle pack of 100 is P11 (50% cheaper when you buy in Divisoria)
• 1 30″x20″ Engineering 100/105 tracing paper (which can make 48 lamps) is more or less P100
• For almost 70 lamps, we bought 12 popsicle packs (P130) and 2 tracing papers (P200) and use 5 glue sticks (I don’t know how much each stick costs because we have spare)
• Total cost is approximately P400.00. Individual lamp will cost about P5.00. *Candle or LED tea light not included. Cost varies depending on the type of paper used.
• LED tea light is sold for P100/5 pieces at a novelty store in 168 Mall, Divisoria