Dollhouse Miniature Candles

Watch the video here.

This week's project just kind of happened. I was cleaning up a bit in my office/craftroom and while picking up some bits of leftover clay I noticed something. Now I have looked at the ends of clay canes probably a million times over the last 20 plus years I have been playing with polymer clay. But for whatever reason I saw something this week that I hadn't noticed in the past. I noticed that the shape that pretty much ever clay cane takes on at the end looks a bit like a partially melted candle.

So instead of finishing up with cleaning my workspace I started playing with clay. Trying to get the look of the top of a used candle and I think for the most part I got what I was looking for.

This is a great project to use up tiny bits of colored clay, and also a great place to use some of those beautiful colors of clay that we buy and then don't have a use for. For instance, you all know I mostly make doll food with my clay. But, I can't pass up the beautiful purple, blue and metallic colors of clay when they go on sale. There really aren't a lot of foods that use any of those colors. I have made some really pretty dishes out of them but they really can't go into the foods I primarily make.

So pull out those beautiful colors and make some candles.

In my experiments I found that the softer the clay the better this works. Also not all of the candles will remain standing straight when they get baked. Some of them just decided to bend. So make extras knowing some are just not going to work.

The only prep work you need to do is make a long very thin snake of black clay for the burnt wick in your candles. Mine was probably too fat but it still got the idea across.

I did use some simple clay tools to help coax the clay to do what I wanted but for the most part it really does form itself to look like a candle.

So make a bunch of candles for your dollhouse and send me a picture. What color candles does your dollhouse need this winter??

After I had this blog post all written and scheduled and I thought I was all done with this project I decided to play with a couple of the candles I had made. I made some more leaves the same way I did in last week's tutorial and I cut a round shape from some metallic cardstock. I glued 3 of my candles in the center(ish) then glued some leaves around the candles. I think it turned out rather cute.