I Love Red Candles at Christmas.

Wow I'm back. It's not often you see me twice in one day. Thanks to those who have already visited my earlier post. I do appreciate it.

This morning I made my chili and ginger jam as planned, so the house is quite pungent! I shall take some up to the sale this evening. Our village art and craft expo goes on until Sunday lunchtime, but we take it in turns to man it after the first busy evening. I am on duty tomorrow morning.

I have also retrieved all the decorations from the back of the garage so this evening I will be tackling the tree, but first I decided to make one more card. I have nearly reached my total now. Just a few more to go.

This card has made use of one of a pack I acquired around fifteen years ago. It is probably from the time when I lived near Shrewsbury and frequently visited the QVC surplus store. They sold mountains of returned orders, opened packets that had had bits used for demonstrations, damaged packs, odds and ends all bundled together, and they were nearly giving them away. I bought all sorts of bits there, sometimes with no idea of what was in the pack, hence a few oddities now lurking at the bottom of my cupboards! 

The pack of cards all had a Christmas die-cut aperture, sort of like a stencil. They weren't large enough for iris folding, and I wasn't inspired to use them at the time. But I guess my crafting has changed since then, and when I spotted them the other day, I could see that some of them had potential, and could be a good way of using up some more of those snippets. So I chose the candle aperture. The red paper behind it is from a challenge I entered a couple of years ago. I can't remember what colour it was originally, but I had fun at the time with a red and gold mica spray recolouring it. The yellow behind the flames, and for the flower centre was made by modge-podging a serviette onto white card. I don't remember what project that was for! Anyway, they have found a new home now. The red for the flower and green for the leaves were also oddments from my snippets box. Both dies were blue so I think they were Marianne's. I used glitter glue to define some dripping wax on the candle and add some glitter to the flames and flowers. Most of my stickles are pretty old now and they are getting a bit thick, so I had to resort to a fine paint brush to spread them out today. But they still sparkle, so that's the main thing. I might add a small sentiment later. I haven't decided yet.

Right. So that is one more to link to Pixie's Snippets Playground, (I have managed three this week Di), and then I'm off to find the lights for that tree. Once they are on, I love doing the rest of it.