Candle holders, Beans, and Peas

I got to work Friday morning and found a gift-wrapped box sitting in my desk chair. Talk about an awesome way to start your day! I absolutely love receiving gifts! Absolutely love it! And I love giving gifts, especially to John Darrin. It is just so fun! But, this isn’t about John Darrin—this is about me and the present sitting in my chair. Turns out it was an early Christmas present from the lovely Malorie at work! Isn’t that cool? Christmas in September, I love that idea!

So I tore open the box to find two beautiful glass candle holders. They are gorgeous and immediately ideas for decorating started pouring through my mind. Well, Sunday afternoon I had an experiment in mind that I wanted to try out so I started playing around with them and this was the result.

Aren’t those fun? I already had the metal candle holder in the middle, and these two glass ones go so well with it! I was so happy with how they turned out. The green color you see is split green peas, and the white is great northern beans. Here is the how-to for making them criss-crossed:

First, I went to Burrus (the grocery store in Sanger) and bought two 1 pound bags of split green peas and two bags of great northern beans. It was less than $5 total.

Next, I cleaned the inside of my candle holders with glass cleaner. I waited to do the outside so I wouldn’t have to worry about getting finger prints all over them.

Ok, so you have your candle holder. Now get a piece of paper- I used card stock that I had because it is a little heavier and I thought that would work better. It would probably work with regular paper too, I bet.

Now measure the diameter of your candle holder and cut two pieces of paper to that size. Now cut half-way up the middle of both pieces of paper. Like dis:

Then insert the paper cuts into each other to make an ‘X’. Like dis:

Then try and see if it fits snugly into your holder. I had to trim the bottom corners of mine so that it fit all the way to the bottom of the candle holder.

Ta-daa:

Next, cut the corner off of one of the bags of beans. Don’t make the opening too big because you want to be able to easily control the flow of beans. “Easily control the flow of beans” is not a statement that I thought I would be typing today.

So start pouring beans into one of the four quadrants, if you will. Some beans may sneak underneath your paper if the bottom isn’t perfectly flat. That’s not really a big deal because you aren’t going to be able to see the bottom anyway. Pour a bit into one quadrant and then a bit into the one catty-corner to it. Kinda like this:

This means it is working!

Now pour some green peas into the other two quadrants.

Keep going back and forth between the peas and beans until you get to the depth that you want.

This was great for me. I used one bag each of peas and beans per candle holder. I had a few peas left over because if I had used them all the heights would have been uneven.

Alright so now you are ready to gently pull the paper ‘X’ out.

Nice and easy! Here is the top view:

Isn’t that fun?

Then I smushed a candle down in it to finish it off.

Now if your lines between the beans and peas are kind of curved or not perfect ( I had one of these the first time I did it) you can use a butter knife to gently weave it between the beans/peas and then straighten it up so you have a nice crisp line.

Then you are done!

Kind of fun, huh?

And there are lots of different things you could use if you aren’t feeling the green and white. You could use pinto beans or coffee beans and do brown, black beans for black, rice for off white, noodles if you are into that sort of things. The possibilities are endless! If you do this, let me know how it turns out! Better yet, send me a picture!