Before Christmas I finally had time to focus on my miniature hobby. A few days ago, inspiration hit me as I looked at our candle tree while eating breakfast.
So, I gathered all the supplies and materials I needed (there is a list in the end). As always, these changed along the way for various reasons: perhaps something didn’t look as good as planned or some material didn’t work as it should have.
As a baseline I used two candle trees we have in our home. I drew models of these in scale to make it easier for me to get the turns and relations correct. As is pictured, I was going to make some advent candles as well but I’ll leave that for next Christmas. My desk has to be cleaned as soon as possible…
I started by bending wires. I placed a piece of wire on top of the picture and made it similar to that. Then I moved on to the wooden parts. For the first candle tree I cut two 2.1cm long strips from a thin wooden stick and glued them together to make a 2mm thick base. I drilled seven holes with a 1mm thick drill bit for the wires and put the wires in place. I glued a piece of wire to keep the bent wires together in the middle. Later I figured I need spots for the candles and added small silver beads in the ends of the wires. The wooden parts of the other candle tree are made of match-like craft sticks. The upper one is 2.1cm as well and the lower one slightly over a centimetre. I drilled holes in these as well and glued a piece of wire in between them. To have a place for the candles I glued smaller silver beads on top of the upper beam. Some bling bling ;)! (I had to glue a piece of plastic under the lower beam to be able to make the candle tree stand)
Then there were only the final details left: painting and adding the actual candles. For the wooden candle tree I made candles out of Fimo effect translucent white -clay and for the wire one I simply painted pieces of the same wire white. My initial idea was to make real candles for these, but in such small scale it’s practically impossible. I tried though.
And here is the final result:
And materials as promised:
5mm wide craft sticks
2mm wide craft sticks
c. 1mm thick wire
beads
a small piece of plastic
superglue (for the metallic parts)
wood glue or hobby glue (for the wooden parts)
watercolour paint
acrylic paint
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