Five Christmas Candles

Have you noticed that, at Christmas time, everything is just that much more expensive? Just when you don't need to spend the extra cash.

You can make your own personalised candles to give away as gifts or for your Christmas Eve or Christmas Day celebrations with candles from the $2 store and just a few embellishments from my2angels.

First, just a couple of candle tips....

1. DON'T buy the expensive ones! The highest price I paid was $4.95 for the large Pillar Candles. The other three were already in my cupboard. 

2. If you are getting coloured candles make sure ALL the wax is coloured, not just the outer coating. You can usually see this by looking at the base of the candle, but sometimes the base is also dipped in an outer coloured shell so you need to be careful. A crafty scratch on the base will mostly be enough to expose the evidence of a white core. 

If you try to heat the ones that are only dipped in colour, the colour will run and leave you with white patches. At this point all you can really do is dispose of the evidence...LOL!

For that reason I find it easier to just use white candles, but the coloured ones are pretty too so I have included two - a cream one and a pretty pink one to match this year's theme here at my house. Both are lightly scented. I made five different candles to showcase five easy ways to make them your own. Four of them are stamped, and the last one just decorated.

You will need a few supplies that are common to all the stamped candles:

White Tissue Paper wrap....the cheap kind that you buy from Woolworths and wrap around gifts before wrapping them in the real gift wrap
Waxed paper or Baking paper....I used Glad Bake
Glue Stick
Ink
Stamp
Candle

For the Reindeer candle....

Tissue paper has two sides - a rough and smooth. You can feel the difference with your finger tips. Stamp carefully on the smooth side. Stamp your image a few times so that you can choose the best one to use, then cut it out fairly close to the edge.
TIP: Put a sheet of plain copy paper under the tissue before stamping - the ink will go straight through the tissue and make a mess of whatever you have underneath it.

Use a couple of dabs of glue from the glue stick to stick your stamped image to the candle. It doesn't need to be stuck all the way down, just a few dabs will do.

Wrap your whole candle very tightly with a large piece of Baking paper. Leave enough to get a good grip at the back so you don't burn yourself (you can do that later with the hot glue LOL!).

Warm up your heat tool for a second, then heat the stamped image gently. Don't stay too long in one place or your candle wax will run, but heat gently across the whole image and you will see the tissue paper appear to melt into the candle leaving just the image on the surface. Carefully peel off the baking paper.

Grab a bunch of pretty things from my2angels in your chosen colour that you think you might use to decorate your candle. I grabbed all these, but didn't use all of them of course :)

First I wrapped a piece of Fuschia and Pink Striped Pattern Printed Tape around the candle near the base. NOTHING will stick to the wax - not even hot glue - so I wrapped it tightly and stuck the tape to itself in the middle. This will be covered, so the join will not show.

Then I added a piece of Pink Organza Scalloped Edged ribbon, first wrapping a piece of 3mm double sided tape around (on the centre stripe) so that it would give me something invisible to stick the ribbon to.

I made a separate loop of ribbon to look like a bow (there's no knot) to use as a base for my embellishments. It is also stuck on with a small square of 12mm double sided tape. 

Next came the hot glue gun to attach the embellishments firmly. A Small Square Filigree with a tiny Fuschia Pearl Bead hanging from it, and three Pink 1.3 cm Roses (two Dusty Pink and one Dark Pink).

 I added a few Fuschia Rhinestones to the ribbon and also scattered some onto the stamped image. These seemed to stick OK with just a dab of Glossy Accents.

You can add an image to your candle using many different techniques. I made my next two candles together, using the same ''Merry Christmas'' stamp. After stamping onto the tissue paper, I have coloured one with Copic Markers and the other is heat embossed. (You can also use coloured pencils, or even images printed onto the tissue with your inkjet printer - attach the tissue paper to a sheet of plain paper first so that it runs through the printer OK. You can transfer photos to candles this way too!!!)

Using the same method as before, transfer your images to the candles.

This time I didn't use tape to wrap the candle first. On the embossed one I folded a piece of Purple Organza Scalloped Edged ribbon in half (using double sided tape inside the fold to hold it down) and secured it to the candle with sewing pins. I cut these down with Tonic Scissors first to make them a bit shorter.

Double sided tape again secures a line of Red Multicoloured Acrylic Chain with Rhinestones, then it's back to the Hot Glue to add a Burgundy Mini Gardenia (I removed the bottom layer of petals to make it smaller...my candles are very short) and five Burgundy Roses

For the coloured in candle, first I wrapped around a row of Red Velvet Ric Rac and secured it with pins again, this time adding a layer of Gold Rhinestone Cup Chain to bling it up a bit.

My bow, made from Red Organza Scalloped Edged Ribbon is secured using a red pearl headed pin pushed through a Christmas Holly Gold Charm.

I really liked the effect of the embossing powder on the candle, so decided to crank it up a notch on my next one - the large pink one.

I used three different sized snowflake stamps, Embossing Ink and white embossing powder to make a pile of snowflakes, which I transferred to the top half of the candle.

Wrapped around the middle is a length of White Organza Scalloped Edged Ribbon, and over the top of that I have added a knotted piece of white tulle. The central embellishment is a Silver Flower Wrap Filigree with a small length of Silver chain and a Silver Jumpring attached. I made a small hole in the filigree with a hammer and sharp nail to attach the chain. At the end, a Silver Angel Wing charm is dangling. The centre of the filigree is covered by the Flower Centre part of a Pink and Silver Rose Charming Chain.

The rest of this gorgeous hand made embellishment is stretched around the back of the candle on top of the ribbon - this time attached with hot glue. Fuschia Rhinestones complete the centre of each snowflake.

My final candle is a cream coloured pillar candle, and rather than transfer a design to this one, I decided to make it pretty by just embellishing it. I wanted a rich, oppulent effect this time, so I decided to go with Antique Gold. 

I started with three Filigree Bronze Corners, which just happened to fit perfectly around the candle. I bent them around the base to make three 'feet', so that it would stand up off the ground. I struggled a bit when attaching these, trying hot glue, superglue and double sided tape with no success. Fortunately there are a couple of very small holes in each side of these filigrees, so in the end I settled for sewing pins, stuck through these holes (pick the ones with heads big enough to NOT fall straight through LOL!). To conceal the silver heads of the pins I covered them with a spot of Gold Liquid Pearls, although it would have been better to use Golden Headpins. After attaching, the filigrees are still a bit unsteady, but to firm them up a bit it's just a matter of running over the area lightly with a heat tool. The metal heats up and attaches itself to the wax. The wax cools and the filigree is anchored in place. Too much movement will break this seal though, so you may have to repeat this step when your candle is complete.

My embellishments are quite simple really. First a strip of gold organza ribbon - I think this one is recycled from a bunch of flowers someone gave me, then a loop of the same ribbon to simulate a bow. I used more pins to attach the ribbon at the centre, and double sided tape to attach the loop.

The rest of the embellishments are attached with hot glue. A large Antique Bronze Square Filigree for the centre was followed up by a twisted piece of Tim Holtz Idea-ology Film Strip Ribbon. I kept the twist in this by first winding it loosly around a pencil and securing the ends with pins. Then I lightly - that's lightly! - heated it with my heat tool and left it to cool down. Once cool the twist stays in the ribbon.

Next I found a cute picture of old-fashioned Christmas Carollers in my stash and covered it with a 25mm Glass Cabochon using Glossy Accents, then stuck it into the middle.

My White Cherry Blossoms have been given a spray of Glimmermist, Apple first for the green ones, and then Irridescent Gold over the top. You can just about see the shimmery gold in the first close-up. The smaller Cream Roses were also given a glimmer treatment, and finally I added a few pearl headed pins. These pins have the happy effect of not only looking quite pretty, but also they help to hold everything securely.

So I have a range of pretty candles ready for Christmas....

Can you burn these candles? I don't really know - but I think that if you are watchful it would be OK. Most candles burn down the centre first, leaving an outside shell for quite a long time, but organza ribbon, tulle, paper flowers and certainly acetate film strip are all flammable, so be careful and don't leave any burning candles unattended.

Michele xxx