3D Tuesday Challenge-I Burn for You, Part 2

For this week’s 3-D Tuesday at Paper Craft Planet, we’re following up Susanna’s fabulous candle project from last week with a little more candlemaking fun. Today, I’m going to share with you how to make a fabulous gift box that will hold 4 small tea lights. This makes a great little gift to bring to a hostess or give to a friend to brighten their day.

The process for stamping on tea lights is pretty similar to the one for stamping on regular candles. You need to be sure to find an image that will fit the small surface of the tea light. I prefer using solid images on these candles since the working surface is pretty small. Here, I used one of the round images from Papertrey Ink's 2009 Autumn Tags sets. I stamped the image on tissue paper, then punched it out with a 1 3/8" circle punch. I found that it was easier to put a piece of plain copy paper behind my tissue paper before punching--the tissue paper is so delicate and the copy paper gives it a little more body. Next, I punched a hole in the center using a 1/8" handheld circle punch. This allows you to thread the candle’s wick through it so the tissue will lie flat on the candle's surface.

Now you’re ready to melt the image on to the candle. Just place the image on to the candle’s surface and heat with a heat tool. The top layer of wax will melt and coat the stamped image. The outside rim of the tea lights will get hot (spoken from experience), so you may want to hold the stamped tissue paper in place with a tweezers or other tool that’s heat safe.

I decorated the metal rim of the tea lights with small strips of designer paper (1/2" by 5"). A little bit of Mono Multi held the paper on well. You could also tie ribbon around the base, too.

The pattern for the box is found here (on the PCP Ning site). It’s basically a nugget box, adjusted in size just a little bit to accommodate the candles. You can decorate the box with stamped images that coordinate with your candles or some coordinating designer paper and add a tag to finish off the gift set. UPDATE: I have a slightly different box template linked in this post. It also holds 4 tealights, but has a flip top instead of a slide opening.

I hope you'll play along with the challenge this week. If you do, please upload your project to the PCP gallery with the keyword 3d29 so I can add it to the gallery for everyone to admire.

Materials Used:
2009 Autumn Tags stamp set, Pure Poppy and Summer Sunrise inks, Pure Poppy, Summer Sunrise, and Vintage Cream cardstock, Autumn Abundance patterned paper, Summer Sunrise satin ribbon, twine (Papertrey Ink); 1 3/8", 1 3/4", and 1/8" circle punches (Stampin' Up!); scalloped circle die (Nestabilities); ScorTape and ScorPal; tea lights