Simple Gifts #4

Holiday Greetings!  Busy bee as usual around here, rushing now since its only a week til the big day!  Today's simple gift was made for my mom, who has a December birthday and loves candles of all sorts!

This project was lovely to make, smelled divine and was pretty easy!  And, if you keep your eyes pealed for deals it can be made very inexpensively.  Wanna make one too?  Here's what you need:

-any size or shape candle holder (i used a square one found at the Dollar Tree)
-decorative cinnamon sticks (found on sale at Michael's for $1.99)
-E6000 and/or hot glue
-Jute Twine (another lovely dollar store find!)

for the flower (optional)


-one inch circle punch
-old book page, scrapbook paper, sheet music, etc.
-one inch flat back marble
-one inch wooden circle or button

Step One:  Cut your cinnamon sticks to size.  I cut mine just slightly taller than the top of the candle holder.  I wanted them to not be uniformly cut to look more rustic, so I didn't measure much.  I used a pair of old wire cutters to snip them because I don't have a small saw.  This worked fine but you may want to wear safety glasses, sometimes shards of cinnamon sticks will fly!  This step is lovely because you get to smell yummy cinnamon the whole time!

Step Two:  Once you have your sticks cuts, start arranging them around the candle holder, gluing in place as you go.  For this step, I used E6000 because I thought it would be too messy with hot glue.  Do just a few sticks at a time, arranging as you like.  Hold in place with a rubber band and allow to dry ( I left mine overnight even though it probably only needed an hour or so to set!)  If you are using hot glue to adhere the cinnamon sticks you can skip the dry time and on to the next step!

Step Three:  Wrap several times with the jute twine.  Just wing it here, I wrapped it a lot because I was working with a pretty large candle holder and wanted it to be nicely centered.  I put a bead of hot glue every couple of wraps to help secure it.  Once you're satisfied with the number of wraps, tie a secure knot in it and tuck it under and secure with a little bit of hot glue.

Now, ERL saw it at this point in the process and said, "That looks really cool, you should leave it like that".  I do love the way it looks, but felt it needed just a little bit more, so I punched some circles with my 1" punch and did a little arranging to make the flower.  While working with them, I realized that I had randomly ripped a page out of the old book that just happened to have the word Christmas on them!  That told me it was meant to be!

Step Four:  I didn't take any step by steps of the flower, since I wasn't really sure what i was doing at the time!  Punch some circles, distress (if ya like), glue together, then slightly curl the edges with a pencil or a bamboo skewer. You can make the flower as simple or as elaborate as you like.  If you want to accentuate a word on your book page, glue the circle with the word on to a one inch flat backed marble, allow to dry thoroughly before gluing it to your flower.

Step Five: Once you have your flower assembled and decorated (how about glitter???), glue a wooden disk or button to the back of it with E6000.  This will give your fragile paper flower a little more stability and help it hang on to the jute twine.  Once your glue is dry, take your whole flower and stick it right on the twine, again I recommend E6000 because its a major adhesive that is very hard to get off once its dried!

Voila!  Fancy looking, yummy smelling candle holder complete!

I am so happy about this project, it can be simplified or fancied up in so many ways!  Tie a ribbon, add some bells, or just leave it plain and rustic looking!

Hope this mini-tutorial brings you inspiration!  Please let me know if you have any questions or run into any problems with this project.

Thanks to new readers and wishing you happiness for the holiday season!