You’re camping in a borrowed summer house and have candles but no holders.Or you’re just tired of your usual candle holders. A photo of pencil candles in a galvanized bucked of sand, seen at Dee Puddy, a U.K. garden and interiors store, provides a great gist of a solution for improvising on. You could use just about any vessel.
Think:    beautiful glasses or jars
a rectangular pate tin a square terracotta planter
an ironstone bowl…

…….. and fill it with:     sand
dirt
pebbles, small stones
dried beans (black-and-white Calypsos!)
rice
salt….

…..to support just about any size candles.

Even more minimal and direct: melt candles right onto a surface (a plate, a slab of stone, a table, the floor); pencil candles work best.

via Emma’s Blog