Fragrance stick holder from bottle cap DIY

It is fashionable to grab those colourful and sometimes exquisite kundan work incense stick holders and diyas during festival season.


Incredible home based businesses have sprung up for the sticks, wooden holders, metal stands, earthernware...

What if you have run out of them around home? Or need something for daily use?

The narrow mouth of some toothpaste tubes can come handy to make your own piece. I tried the experiment with the squeeze-opener of a chocolate syrup bottle. You can look around for shampoo bottle caps, face-pack tube caps, and a host of other objects around home.

These products invariably have some plastic on them. And the caps are usually plastic.

Just make sure the bottom half of such caps has a narrow spout.

 You will need:

-- used bottle cap with a squeeze hole

-- a nail clipper or a pair of scissors, or ...any small tool that can shear plastic

-- modelling clay

-- paper plate, preferably a used one, which does not have oil stains

-- paint pen or embellishments

-- optional is a stamp ink pad and stamp to decorae

-- keep glue and tissue paper handy

Wash the cap thoroughl and dry.

Use the nail clipper or a jewellery plier to clip off the upper half of the hole-type cap. It takes some effort, but is possible.

Take some modelling clay that kids or other friends may be playing with -- I had a packet of modelling clay stashed away for a while. And pulled it out for this project.

The chocolate brown among the colours suited fine for the bottle cap I had. Take about half a small cane and roll between your palms to form a small ball and a roughly shaped diskette.

Press this on to the inside of the spouted cap half. If you feel it is not enough, take a little more clay and add to the mound. Thanks to the clay, the cap will acquire some weight. You can place this over a small plate or the large lid of some other bottle, or glue it on to the paper plate.

I made the mistake of trying to put some design on the paper plate, by using a stamp on it. The plate turned out to be too smooth for the stamping ink.

So I had to quickly wipe it clean.
The next step, was to use some craft glue (multi-surface) to glue this cap on to the paper plate's center. Let it dry.

 After this, my paint pen came in handy. And no, I did not want to embellish the plastic cap.

I did not want to make it design heavy. And so made do with a simple dot-style one.

The fragrance stick holder is ready.

You can also use it as a toothpicks tray when hosting a party or dinner. Or maybe crochet sticks when you are into crafting.

The project costed me hardly anything. It can come in handy as a centerpiece for my next party. Am mulling over what to do with the other half of this cap.



Pictures courtesy: Radhika M B

Write to: radicreative@gmail.com