Stephanie Says (Leaking her heart on paper)

Love Letter Candles

One of the candles has an excerpt of a love letter that I had written to the person the gift was for. The second candle has an excerpt of a love letter that was written to me from the person who I made the gift for. The third candle has a famous love poem or song. In this case the scripture “love is patient, love is kind…” All in fonts that reflected our personalities. I’m very proud of these. I made them and came up with the idea myself. 

You will need:

- Three small glass tealight holders

- Clear vellum paper

- Inkjet printer

- Twine or other String

- Beads and Charms

- Scissors and a Glue Stick

Type out the paragraphs you want on each candle and print them out on plain paper to test how big or little the font needs to be or how much you can fit on each candle. This took a couple tries for me. Once you have the sizes right, print them out on a single sheet of vellum paper and cut them into three strips to fit around each candle.

I also had to play around with the ink settings on my printer. You have to find which “media type” works for you. For example “semi-gloss photo paper”, “matte photo paper”, etc. I have a canon 3 in 1 printer and “Other photo paper” was the setting that worked for mine. Do a “practice run” by printing out a single word on one sheet of vellum paper so you don’t waste a whole sheet. Then you have to let it dry for approximately 20  minutes, if it still smudges, then try a different setting. If you are inpatient, you can try a hair dryer to speed it up.

In the meantime I started working on wrapping the twine around the candles and adding beads/charms. Use a glue stick to put glue on the edges of the vellum paper and wrap them around the candles, be careful not to smudge the glass. Then wrap the twine and beads/charms around it. This may take some experimentation too. I realized the candle holders I used got gradually bigger at the top so they kept slipping down. I made the twine tighter and then pushed it up towards the top of it to stay. 

Out of different tealights, I found the ones that sit in the little metal tins to be too dark and not allow as much light to shine through the glass. I ended up using light blue ones that sit in clear plastic tins. Definitely the favorite gift I’ve made so far. :)