Cardboard Roll Christmas Candle Craft for Kids

This cardboard roll Christmas candle craft is fun and easy for kids to make. Using paper towel rolls for the candles and tissue paper for the flames, your child can create a festive display for a holiday mantel or your Christmas dinner table.  

The daycare hooligans made the prettiest Christmas candle decorations out of paper towel tubes the other day.

You may also like these Sunday school crafts for young children.

We love crafting with cardboard rolls, and we’ve used them to make several terrific Christmas crafts in the past. We’ve made toilet roll reindeer, toilet roll snowmen, and our  toilet roll nativity set. 

These candles are my newest favourite.

The kids had a lot of fun making them, and we were so impressed with the way they turn out. Aren’t they pretty? 

One of the daycare parents saw the candles all lined up at pick-up time, and commented on how real they look. I’d been thinking the same thing! Who knew the humble paper towel roll could look so good?!

Won’t they look beautiful displayed on a mantel, windowsill or table over the holidays. Eek! Your kids will be so proud.

Originally, I’d thought we would paint the orange flames of the candles, but I had some tissue paper sitting near the craft table, and it occurred to me that we could make a 3-dimensional flame out of the orange tissue paper.

For an even easier tissue paper flame, check out our tp roll menorah craft.

I’m happy we tried that; it worked great. I love the way the flames puff out from the tops of the candles.

Let me show you how we made our candles start-to-finish. It’s so easy! You totally have to make these with the kids this Christmas season.

How to make a Christmas Candle from a Cardboard Roll:

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Supplies:

• paper towel rolls or wrapping paper tubes
• paint
• paint brushes
• thin cardboard or card stock for the halo around the flame
• scissors
• orange tissue paper

Instructions:

We started by cutting our paper towel rolls into two pieces. We made the cut off-center so we’d get one tall candle and one shorter candle from each cardboard tube.

Painting our candles:

Then we painted our cardboard rolls. We used traditional Christmas colours for our candle craft, but you can use some really funky colours if you’d rather. Turquoise, bright pink and lime great are popular Christmas decor colours these days, or you could do a silver and gold combo or a turquoise and silver combo. Get as creative as you’d like!

Some of the kids painted stripes and dots on their their cardboard rolls, some did solid colours, and some made candy cane stripes.

Making the flames:

After painting our candles, we made our flames using tissue paper for the flame itself and thin cardboard, which we painted yellow, for the halo around the flame.

We traced a circle on a piece of thin, white cardboard and cut that out. This would be the halo around the candle’s flame. The kids painted it yellow, and then they cut the shape of a flame out of their halo.

Next, we cut a slit on either side of the top of the cardboard rolls and we tucked the yellow halos into those slits.

Lastly, we made the flames for our candle craft.

You can make your flames puffy and three dimensional like we did, or make a simple 1 dimensional flame.

For a 3-Dimensional Flame:

1. Cut a piece of orange tissue paper measuring approx 3 x 11 inches.
2. Folded it in half.
3. Working from the back of the halo, push a bit of the tissue paper through the flame cut-out, so the tissue paper puffs out from the front of the halo.

For a 1-Dimensional Flame:

Fold a small piece of tissue paper in half so that it’s just slightly larger than the flame cut out in the cardboard. Tape it in place on the backside of the halo.

Aren’t they beautiful!

And so easy!

This Christmas candle craft is a great craft for the kids to make at home, but it would be a wonderful holiday craft for students to make in the classroom or in art class too!

You may also like these ideas:

• 26 Easy Ornaments for Kids
• Christmas Tree Ornaments that look like Christmas Trees
• 10 Easy Christmas Crafts for Toddlers and Preschoolers