Iron Craft Challenge #51 – Dressing Up The Candles

This week for Iron Craft we were given a do-over, a chance to revisit any of the 50 challenges we’ve already had this year. I went all the way back to Challenge #1 – Lighting the Winter Gloom. There were a couple of techniques I wanted to try on LED candles and candle holders.

Originally, I wanted to do something with making your own mercury glass, but it is impossible to find the Krylon Looking Glass paint you need to do it. So, instead I did one candle using a reverse stencil and glitter paint and the other with a patterned napkin and modge podge. Neither came out exactly as I hoped but I learned a lot along the way.

I was going to do the reindeer candle on a glass candle holder, but I found these LED candles and decided to use it instead.

Then I used the reindeer design I had drawn for the reindeer appliquéd pillow only much smaller. I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it stick to the candle so I could paint around it and then I remembered the restickable glue stick I had. I tested it and it stuck securely, but removed easily.

I used a glitter paint all over the holder. I had thought it would be more like a red paint with glitter in it than a clear paint with glitter. It took coats and coats to get anywhere near the coverage I wanted. With all those coats I needed to use an exacto knife around the edge of the stencil to help remove it.

In the end, I still wasn’t happy with how much white space there still was with the glitter and I added a coat of red paint and two more coats of glitter.

With the Swedish star candle I had originally planned to wrap the whole candle with a patterned napkin. The shape of the candle made it impossible to wrap, so I ended up just cutting out stars instead.

This was a pretty easy technique. I separated the layers of the napkin and then cut out the stars. Then I put a little modge podge on the candle where I wanted the stars and carefully glued them down, making sure to press out any wrinkles.

Finally, I just added a couple of coats of modge podge over the whole candle. I like the look of this and plan on buying some LED piller shaped candles to try this again, this time covering the whole candle.