Navy and Silver Candles with Metal Flowers

There's something about candles as a housewarming present  Maybe it's because I live in the PNW and we're approaching power outage season? I think of it more as new homeowners always having light in their home. 

For these, I tried something new which was making the flowers that are the focal out of metal. This was easily done using pewter that's used in metal embossing. 

Let's get started. 

Supplies: 

• Plain altar candles ( Dollar Tree)
• Decorative  / Scrapbook paper
• Mod Podge
• Glitter Washi Tape
• Acrylic Paint
• Embossable Metal ( I used Art Emboss by AMACO...you can find at craft / art stores, Amazon etc. ) 
• Die Cutter ( I used my Cuttlebug)
• Dies ( I used the Tattered Florals die by Tim Holtz)

I started with a base layer of white paper that I'd trimmed with the glitter washi tape. Measure and apply to your candle using Mod Podge. My go to formula is the Matte. 

I realized I didn't have any paper that worked with the color scheme I was using which is the new homeowner's palette of navy, white and grey.  So I did what creative people do. I made some. Well I painted some. 

I have a roll of paper painter's masking tape like this that I use for projects like this because it's very think but holds the paint well. I covered a couple of pieces in navy acrylic paint and then stenciled the leaves with metallic silver. Originally, I thought I was going to silver leaf the leaves (no pun intended) and then decided to paint. 

Once the papers were stenciled and dry, I tore the edges and then used the Mod Podge to apply to the candles. 

While waiting for the papers to dry, I cut the flowers. I used a crinkled white paper along with the pewter. Layered these and let the glue dry ( I live for Loctite gel control super glue) and then glued them to the candles. I curled the edges of the flowers using the handle of a paintbrush. 

I'm terrible at photographing metal and glitter but this is a closeup. I didn't emboss the metal flowers but I did freehand cut and emboss the leaves: 

To finish, I wrapped the tops with some metallic crochet thread beads and charms. 

I used a scrap of the stenciled paper for the card and used a quote from Maya Angelou as the focal: 

I re-purposed a paper bag by adding some scrapbook papers and more leaves I cut with my die.

Tattered Florals Sympathy Cards

January has been card month for me. Not intentionally, but that’s all I’ve made and it’s been a combination of happy and sad. Birthdays and Sympathy cards. Cycle of life I suppose. Sharing a sympathy card I made and a couple of note cards for other members of the family.

The floral paper is from the Basic Grey Little Black Dress collection. Other papers are a metallic silver and chocolate glitter.

For the sympathy card, I used Sizzix Framelits to cut out the main card  focal and also used a  Tim Holtz die ( Tattered Florals) to make the flowers for the main card and the notecards.  I cut the flowers from the silver metallic paper and then used the end of a paintbrush to curl the edges of each layer of the flowers.

Used coordinating scraps from my stash and scraps of the chocolate glitter paper for the notecards.

Added black rhinestones to the center of each flower.

For the sympathy card, I inked the edges of the oval die cut, stamped the sentiment, added a floral rub-on and edged it with a gold ink pen.