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fsuadamson
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I am re-reading "The Year and Our Children" by Mary Reed Newland for some possible ideas that I can do with my Liturgical Craft Club this month in preparation for this Advent season and December's dedication to the Divine Infancy and she talked about The Christ Candle .
Has anyone made one from scratch and do you know where I might be able to find clip art or copies of the "figures" she talked about that I could easily apply?
Another question I was wondering about is if I paint the symbols with oil paints and then shellac them afterwards... is this safe for burning the candle?
Any blog pictures would be great! Especially for me since I am 95% visual learner and 5% other. 
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JennGM
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I think we've discussed this elsewhere, or maybe just in my head, that Newland's art material suggestions might be a bit outdated.
To decorate a candle, I would use pens like the ones from Hearthsong or do wax punches of the design and apply them to the candle.
I admit I didn't make a full-fledged Christ Candle. There are different interpretations, and I like the Mary Candle. Here's what I did. It's not as crafty, but it will do.
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Mary Chris
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I was just reading that section in her book the other day. It got me thinking about all the stamps I have from Stampin' Up, I have most of the religious Christmas stamps. Anyway if you stamp on a piece of tissue paper then place it on a candle you then cover it with a piece of wax paper and use a blow dryer or heat tool the image will transfer on to the candle. Clear as mud  . I am going to try to decorate the candle with some of my stamps.
Jenn, your candle is absolutely gorgeous!
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fsuadamson
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Oh Jenn,
I love the candle pen WAY MORE than the oil paint! 
Now I need help with the symbols/figures. I'm not artistic enough to free hand draw them...
Can anyone help? Anything online?
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Leslie
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aussieannie
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Leslie, one way to get around the trickier artwork of the child Jesus is to buy very small figurines like these ones - glue the child Jesus onto the candle and then draw simpler designs/decorations around Him.
Jenn, your Christ Child candle was absolutely beautiful, thank you for sharing it.
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rashfordmom
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Hey Leslie!
I've never made a Christ Candle but we have made an Easter Candle (sorry no pictures!) and we used scrapbook stickers (a gold cross and gold numbers and letters) that turned out beautifully. Since we didn't burn our candle often I didn't worry too much about creating a fire hazard. Perhaps you could find religious stickers like those used for the FHC notebooks?
I can't wait to see how yours turn out!
Blessings,
Amanda (also in GA)
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JennGM
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rashfordmom wrote:
Hey Leslie!
I've never made a Christ Candle but we have made an Easter Candle (sorry no pictures!) and we used scrapbook stickers (a gold cross and gold numbers and letters) that turned out beautifully. Since we didn't burn our candle often I didn't worry too much about creating a fire hazard. Perhaps you could find religious stickers like those used for the FHC notebooks? |
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I was thinking that there were some great discussions about making a Paschal candle, which the Christ Candle can be double purpose maybe? We had some old threads
Easter Vigil Notebooks
Paschal Candle
I don't think I could take images or figures on my candle. I think my approach would be to do symbols of the various figures. And there are loads of symbols (clip art) online and books that you can copy and maybe put onto the candle with ease.
I bought a Paschal Candle from Our Father's House and they had the design on a clear sticker to put on the candle, and like Amanda said, the instructions said to remove when burning close to the sticker.
The possibilities are endless. 
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KackyK
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A great way to transfer an image onto the candle, similar to what Mary Chris said, is by embossing it first. I have found it makes it 'pop out' more. I did this about 150 times on small votives for my brother's wedding guests' favors. I used gold embossing on white votives (the stamp had their names and the date of the wedding).
Anyways, stamp your image on tissue paper using a watermark pad (Stampin Up's Versamark, I think it is in stores too??). Then put on embossing powder. Heat with a heat gun (or hair dryer). Then cut close to the edge of your image, hold it up against the candle and then use the heat gun again (use tweezers or the like to hold it there, or you'll burn yourself) to "melt" the tissue paper into candle. You'll be able to tell when you should stop the heat.
Also you can find some nice stamp images at Catholic Rubber Stamps
Thanks for the reminder of that idea Mary Chris...that would be a nice way to decorate a candle too! hmmm....
But those pens are more child friendly (at least for my dc  )! It would be nice to know how to better free hand something. again, hmmm....
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MaryM
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We are doing a Mary candle instead of a Christ candle also. When I saw Jenn’s post last year I really wanted to do it, but it was too late for me to get it together for 2006. So before Candlemas this year we made all the candles for our liturgical year. One is a larger pillar candle for the Mary candle. I chose to scent it with carnation fragrance for the “Incarnation” which would be very fitting symbolically. I wanted it white, but since I also wanted it 51% beeswax and I didn’t have the bleached beeswax, it turned out yellowish. But it smells wonderful. We had the candles blessed at the Candlemas Mass.
I hope to write a post about this but since I haven’t, I’ll describe it here. We prepared the candle a week ago at our homeschool activity day. I had families each bring a pillar candle. We carved out a niche for the infant Jesus figure and decorated it with sequin stars (attached with tacky wax). I didn't have anything specific in mind and another mother reminded us of the symbolism of 12 stars so that is what we did. We then cloaked them with a white cloth. I might add some Marian symbols to the cloth but haven't decided.
Here is how ours turned out.
 
Now back to the Christ candle. It is possible to paint the candles with something besides oil paint. At Easter time Gwen invited our family to paint Paschal candles with them and she assured me acrylic paints work just fine and they did. There is even a candle medium one can add to acrylic paint but it actually doesn’t seem necessary. If you try to scrape the paint off with something sharp it will come off but with normal wear and rubbing it is fine and the colors show up fine. I have looked for the liquid wax pens that Jenn mentioned. It doesn’t look like you can get them in the US except through Hearthsong, but they seem to be available in the UK – maybe the actual pen company is there. Another way to include pictures on the candle is to actually adhere them with tacky wax as mentioned above. I used Yaley brand that I got a craft store, but I can’t seem to find it on the Yaley site. You can adhere just about anything to wax with it. So you could download pictures from the internet or even make little sculpey figures or use felt – just use the same cautions as mentioned when actually lighting the candle. And I am with Jenn on preferring symbols over figures. It’s so much easier to draw/paint symbols than people (for me anyway – my people always look funky).
Does anyone know of an on-line source of downloadable pictures of the Jesse Tree symbols? I have them in a couple books, but it would be nice if there was an on-line source to just print out and cut.
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MaryM wrote:
| Does anyone know of an on-line source of downloadable pictures of the Jesse Tree symbols? I have them in a couple books, but it would be nice if there was an on-line source to just print out and cut. |
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Here are some ready to print.
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fsuadamson
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You ladies are *AWESOME*. Jenn the links have my mind spinnng.  I have so many ideas to try.
Mary the visuals are wonderful. A couple quick questions..... What tools did you use to carve out the niche? Where did you get your infant?
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Leslie reminded me about this question. I responded to her but wanted to also post here in case anyone else is interested. We used linoleum cutters and woodcarving set. They are used for carving wood and/or linoleum. I used both v-gouge (for outlining) and u-gouge (for scooping). Since the wax is softer than those the gouge tips worked great. I happen to have them on hand in my art supplies so after trying a knife ( I tried a sharp one) I thought of these. Some said they used a butter knife for theirs. I just tried it and it can be done but the gouge tools definitely are easier.
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fsuadamson
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I just wanted to let those of you that helped me problem solve and who were interested know that I finally posted about how we made our Christ Candle!
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Leslie
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Gloria JMJ
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Thank you all for the great ideas!
Gloria
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I'm bumping this thread, adding Beeswax Baby Jesus for resources.
Stephanie (St. Anne) sent some gorgeous pictures of her Mary Candle.
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Thank you so much, Jenn, for fixing the photographs for this forum!
I also found my candle on ebay for 1Euro!!!! plus postage of course. Someone found it in their parents cellar or attic...had no use for it. I looked last year and didn't find one, so I got lucky this year.
I hesitate to light it.
Do you all really burn this candle???
Do you save baby Jesus ... just in time?
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St. Ann wrote:
Thank you so much, Jenn, for fixing the photographs for this forum!
I also found my candle on ebay for 1Euro!!!! plus postage of course. Someone found it in their parents cellar or attic...had no use for it. I looked last year and didn't find one, so I got lucky this year.
I hesitate to light it.
Do you all really burn this candle???
Do you save baby Jesus ... just in time? |
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I Never burn it!
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Jennifer G. Miller
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JennGM
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JennGM wrote:
St. Ann wrote:
Thank you so much, Jenn, for fixing the photographs for this forum!
I also found my candle on ebay for 1Euro!!!! plus postage of course. Someone found it in their parents cellar or attic...had no use for it. I looked last year and didn't find one, so I got lucky this year.
I hesitate to light it.
Do you all really burn this candle???
Do you save baby Jesus ... just in time? |
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I Never burn it! |
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Just wanted to comment that my cancle was from the 1940s-50s, made in Western Germany...so I'm wondering if Stephanie's was the same deal.
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Jennifer G. Miller
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4Real Forums : Domestic Church
Topic: Have you ever made a Christ Candle?
