Craftiosity – Fruity Candle Painting and Candle Holders

Apparently painted candles are all the rage right now, and the latest kit from Craftiosity is on hand so you can make some of your very own!

This lovely craft subscription send out a different kit each month, giving you the opportunity to make, craft, and create a different project each time. Each one uses different techniques, and all of them will produce something lovely for your home or as a gift. Everything is included in the box, so there’s no need for special equipment or tools. You’ll only need to use your own basic household items like scissors and tape measures. And this time we don’t even need those!

This month’s kit gives you everything you need to paint some lovely candles, including a selection of acrylic paints, candles, and a dotting tool. Also in the box is some Fimo, a polymer clay that you shape like plasticine and bake to harden. The Fimo is to make candle holders.

First, the Fimo. The instructions suggest rolling it out into a long thin sausage and then curving and curling it around the candle to make a holder. It’s very relaxed in terms of what you should do, you can really shape them how you like. This is a nice tactile bit of the project! Then you just pop them into a warm oven to cure.

Now comes the painting bit. The instructions give some guidance for using the dotting tools to create fruit and flowers. There are plenty of colours of paint, and of course you can mix your own, or if you have your own paints you can use those too! The dotting tool doesn’t work in the same way as a brush – you literally dot the paint on, and you can spread it around too. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but it’s actually very effective, especially on this kind of surface.

While I loved the look of the fruit pattern on the instruction booklet, I didn’t feel quite brave enough to try something that elaborate. Though the instructions do say to use your creativity and imagination however you like, so that’s what I decided to do!

Here are three of the patterns I did. (There are five candles in total.) I thought cactus would be cute and quite easy, plus there are the two colours. You need to do each colour individually, letting each one dry, so I actually did all the green parts first and left them. While they were drying I decided to do one with little hearts. It’s a very simple shape, especially with the dotting tool, which gives a nice round edge. I used some red paint, and mixed up a bit of pink as well for contrast. I didn’t worry about doing the two colours separately as they weren’t going to be touching, I just went back and forth between the two.

The blue ones were kind of different. I realised that the slightly teardrop shape was very easy to make, you just put the blob of paint down and the drag to create the point. I thought the little groups of three would look pretty, and perhaps a little bit like water drops. Or maybe flowers. It doesn’t really matter! I really like the blue against the white candle too.

You also have to be quite careful when rotating the candle to paint all around it. I ended up resting the bottom part on the table and holding the very top, where there was no paint to smudge. As the patterns are all small I didn’t have to worry about moving it around as I painted, I just made one pattern and rotated it a little bit each time.

Leaving them to dry was a bit of a challenge!

Of course you can’t lay them down, so I came up with this low-tech method of propping them up in glasses, making very sure that there wasn’t a painted bit on the edge where it was leaning.

I took a picture of these four drying, then realised there was another candle hiding under the pink paper shred in the box! So I made another flower one, this time with orange flowers.

And here they all are! I’m really impressed with how effective they are, the paint really pops against the white candles. They will be lovely