Bold Blooms T-Light Holder created for Chocolate Baroque

Good afternoon. This was one of my recent samples using the Bold Blooms stamp set from Chocolate Baroque. I had a bit of fun creating this little T-light holder. The sentiment verse reads ‘Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed also the soul’.

Materials:

• Bold Blooms stamp set
• 15 X 10cm mixed media white board (Chocolate Baroque), metallic card (silver satin)
• Gesso (Black)
• Inkpads: StazOn (Jet Black), Versamark, Encore (Metallic Silver)
• WOW Embossing Powders (my own mix - pinks and purples)
• Sakura Glaze Pen (pink)
• Lose glitter (silver) and glitter glue (silver)
• Floral stamens (pink, yellow)
• Hot melt glue gun with clear glue sticks
• 2mm aluminium craft wire (Beads Direct) and scrap 0.6mm wire (pink coated)
• Electric T-light (battery operated)
• Jewellery pliers and mandrel (e.g bottle or jar)

How it was made:

1. The base and candle casing were coated with Gesso. The candle was then stamped with the sentiment using silver ink. Tip: roll the candle onto the inked stamp. Alternatively use a separate strip of black card and wrap it around the candle after stamping.
2. The base panel was stamped with Versamark and heat embossed with pink mix powder.
3. The 2mm wire was shaped into a spiral around a bracelet mandrel (use a bottle or jar if you don’t have one). To work harden the wire so that it keeps it shape gently tap along the wire (while still on the mandrel) using a nylon jewellery hammer (or use a wooden hammer, or even your acrylic block if you don’t have these). You will feel it stiffen and it will hold shape better.
4. I made an upright strut (seen just behind the small floral embellishment) and attached using loops created with round nosed pliers. I then used scrap wire to wrap to hold sections together where needed. Don’t worry if this looks scrappy, joins can be covered up later. You just need the structure to hold and not flop or spring around.
5. The images were stamped onto metallic card using StazOn ink and coloured with glaze pen, then cut out. The small leaves were cut from the larger leaf and combined with the small flower to make the small embellishment.
6. The large flower was stamped 3 times and was cut out, snipped into and shaped to make it 3D (i.e. into a cone shape). The outer layer of the large flower was backed with another stamped image to make it double sided (i.e. 2 images used to make the large flower outer). The middle of the third image was trimmed to make a central layer of petals. The middle of the flower was trimmed to leave a hole to glue in the stamens and attach it to wire.
7. Hot melt glue was used to attach the flower, stamens and embellishments to the wire, and the wire structure to the base. I dropped in some glitter before the glue set to add sparkle. Again you don’t need to be super neat with this. I then added blobs of glittered glue along the wire too.
8. Finally I used standard glitter glue to further embellish the flowers and base.

I was really pleased with the result – it has a sort of Indian feel. I may need to make another of these for myself.