Devotional Candles

A gift for the independents in your life, one that is completely unique and very inexpensive – and it will show someone how very devoted you are to them. You've all seen the tall, decorated glass candles, traditionally with saintly images pasted on them, for sale as much as ten or fifteen dollars, right? Well, you can often find plain glass candles in your grocery or drug store for as little as a dollar. With a little decoupage glue and some imagination you can transform them into a cool and functional one-of-a-kind glow. Here are some tips:

Figure Out Your Design First – take a piece of paper and wrap it around the candle to get the dimensions, then lay the paper out to see how much surface area you have to cover. It might be easiest to glue the pieces onto a background paper and attach the whole thing, rather than layering on piece after piece. It just depends on what look you want.

Hodge Podge Is Your Friend – and it comes in all kinds of finishing, including glitter. Use the decoupage glue to attach the images to the glass, then put a light coat over the image to seal it. Follow instructions on the glue container for how long to wait until a second coat. Give the whole thing plenty of time to dry before you wrap it up and give it as a present. Decoupage does tend to stay a bit tacky for a while, so tissue paper is probably not the best way to go for wrapping. Eventually the glue will become hard enough not to stick to things.

Mass Production Works – these make really cool gifts for opening night of a play, as a party favor, or in other events where you might want to give more than one. If you plan to do this it is best to actually create your design on a piece of paper and then color copy it. You can see how cool the candles I made for friends came out in these pictures - both made for a large cast. In the end I probably spent as much as buying flowers for everyone, and candles don't die. Even when the wax burns down they still have a cool souvenir to always remind them of the show.