Dinosaur Shabbat Candle Holders

If you have a dinosaur lover in your house, making these quick, easy, and super cute Dinosaur Shabbat Candle Holders is essential to a fun Shabbat experience.

Whether you go all-out Shabbatasaurus (dinosaur-themed Shabbat), having custom-made, interest-specific Shabbat candle holders always makes Shabbat extra special for the little ones.

Shabbat activity: Dinosaur Shabbat Candle Holders

What You’ll Need

2 candlesticks or candle holders. You need enough surface area on these candle sticks/holders to create your art. I found the square glass candle holders as the best fit for this project, but you could also decorate a wide-based candle stick. We got ours at Dollar Tree but you can find yours anywhere (maybe even around the house!)
Tissue paper, cut into 1 x 1 inch (or so) squares
Glue or mod podge
Sharpie in whatever colors you desire
Dinosaur shaped cookie cutter or stencil (optional). Make your own dino stencil here! Just reduce the print size to 70%. It worked perfectly for us.
Dinosaur stickers (optional)
2 tealight candles, votives or traditional Shabbat candles

Putting It Together

1.Make sure your candle sticks/holders are ready to decorate by cleaning the surface. This might include hard-to-take-off price stickers. Check out the trick I used when removing the labels from tin cans for my Thanksgiving Shabbat candle holders!

2. Paint the sides of the candle holder (or base if you’re using candlesticks) with mod podge. If you don’t have mod podge, don’t worry! It’s so simple to make your own.

Squirt some Elmer’s glue into a container (we used a small mason jar). Add some water and stir it around with your paint brush. I used about two tablespoons of glue to a little less than one tablespoon of water. You’re basically thinning your glue so that it paints on easily and will dry mostly clear.

3. Place your tissue paper squares on the glue or mod podge. The candle will shine through better if you use only one layer of tissue paper but my daughter really liked piling it on. And that’s just fine!

4. Once you cover all the glue area with tissue paper, carefully paint over the tissue paper with your glue mixture or the modge podge. This could get a little tricky, especially for younger kids. The tissue paper may move around and bunch up. It might help to have an adult finger holding the squares steady while the kids paint.

5. Next you have to wait for the glue to dry. Boo. I hate waiting and I know kids do too! Since we made this project as part of our larger Shabbatasaurus, dinosaur-themed Shabbat, we used our craft drying time to read books about dinosaurs. And play with our dinosaur figurines. Because that is super fun too!

6. Once the tissue paper is completely dry (ours took a few hours), you can decorate the outside however you wish. We used homemade dinosaur stencils. We traced some stencils, then my son filled in the shape with black sharpie. The dinosaurs really stand out that way!

My daughter did not want to fill in her dinosaur shapes so she just has the outline. And that’s totally fine too 🙂

If you have store-bought dinosaur stencils that fit the shape of your candle holders or candle sticks, that would totally work as well. You can fill in these traced dinosaurs with either black sharpie or other colors of permanent markers.

You could also decorate your candle sticks and holders with dinosaur stickers. Just don’t use too many! You want the light to shine through the tissue paper (if you’re using the candle holder option). If you’re decorating candle sticks, then you can sticker all you want!

Once you finish decorating, your candle sticks and holders are ready to use for fun or for a special Shabbat! Add tea lights or traditional Shabbat candles. I personally always prefer using traditional Shabbat candles. They make me think of Shabbat and I find them way easier to use–no burned fingers when I try to put a lit tea light into a candle holder! But either would work, so it’s up to your preference (and maybe what you have in your hall closet!).

7. If you use traditional candles in a square candle holder you might think you have a problem: how will the candle stay upright and not tip over and burn everything? We have a super easy and total kid-friendly hack for you: play doh! That’s right, roll a ball of play dough and smoosh it down slightly in the center of your holder. Gently push down your candle into the blob and it will stay upright. And bonus: the kids get to play with play doh! Win win!

8. Light your candles and enjoy this easy, fun, and kid-made Dinosaur Shabbat Candle Holder craft!

Finished and Loving It!

Oh my gosh, we love our Dinosaur Shabbat Candle Holders! They were so easy to make and the kids could totally did every part of the process themselves! I love when that happens! Yes, it might be helpful to have an adult fingertip to holder the stencil or the tissue paper but otherwise, totally kid-made!

Each of my big kids made one candle holder so we had two total. Perfect for Shabbat!

They each turned out unique, which is always special as well.

And when the candle lit shines through the tissue paper, around the dinosaurs, wow! They sure loved seeing that!!

These candle holders were the perfect way to celebrate our Shabbatasaurus, our dinosaur-themed Shabbat. Shabbat Shadino (Shabbat Shalom in dinosaur talk)!