Hanging Solar Tea Lights

Sometimes I feel like I’m really good at the big things – the main pieces of an outfit, the main furniture in a room – but I struggle with little things, like jewelry and accessorizing a room. So when redoing our patio I tried to be really deliberate and not just think about the big things, but also the atmosphere and accessories. These hanging tea lights are one of the things I felt gave the biggest payoff in the detail category, for very little effort.

I knew I wanted something hanging, and some lighting, so it would be pretty AND functional for our patio. I saw a few hanging tea light/mason jar combos for weddings, and I wanted to adapt that for the patio. Since actual candles didn’t seem practical for this use, I looked up solar powered tea lights (affiliate link). And thanks to the internet, they were easy to find and in my mail later that week.

From there, this is a simple and cheap project. You’ll need:

• Solar powered tea lights (affiliate link)
• Twine
• Craft wire (affiliate link)
• Jars – I used a mix of washed food jars and decorative thrifted ones that were 2 for $1.00. By the way, while making this, I stumbled across a really good tip for removing food labels – use a mix of cooking oil and baking soda made into a paste to scrub them right off without chemicals. Just get as much of the label off as you can with hot water, then use the paste. It works great!
• Cup hooks
• Sand

Form the wire into a loop that’s a few inches bigger than the top of the jar, and then place over the jar and twist the ends, so that there is now a small loop on each end.

String the twine through the two smaller loops and tie securely in a loop. Fill the bottom of each jar with a little bit of sand so that the candle has a level base to sit on. Then add the candles.

Screw cup hooks where you want the lamps to hang, then hang a lamp from each one (I did 12).

The lights I used soak up sun during the day…

Then come on automatically when it gets dark!