Blocks of Holiday Cheer from arc

My very favorite time of year to thrift is Christmas time, and my very favorite place to thrift is arc. There are always tons of ornaments and decorations to find in boxes and in tiny hanging bags. I love these little treasure bags and have had lots of luck finding fun holiday treasures.

My latest treasure bag find was these vintage Gurley candles. They are fun, figural, Christmas shapes and little guys. The price was right at arc with one bag at $.99 and one at $1.29. I wasn’t sure how to best display these so I wandered around arc for inspiration.

I spotted this giant box of blocks over in the toy section for only $2.99 and decided to use them to spell out holiday words as a base for the candles.

I chose to start with “noel” but it was such a big box that I was also able to find letters for “joy,” “merry xmas,” and “fa la la” for my next round of creating. A good bargain at arc for such a big box.

After finding the letters that I wanted, I started by hot-gluing them together.

I decided on my placement of the candles and then hot-glued them on the top. Looking back, I wish I had painted the top of the blocks white before gluing on the candles. I did it afterwards and it doesn’t look quite as neat as it could have. Oh well, learning is part of crafting, and it is very no-pressure when all of the supplies cost only about $5 total from arc.

I painted around the bases of the candles with white acrylic paint and then shook on some fake snow. This was a crazy simple craft but I love how it turned out. It’s a cute holiday project for very little cost thanks to arc thrift.