Polymer clay

Polymer clay (popular brand is fimo) is often used to make figurines, beads and toys. I thought i'd try something a little different and made some tea-light holders

I got hold of two glass tea-light holders from a craft shop and made sure they were heat proof because I didn't want shattering glass in my oven.
I then got hold of some fimo and had a play.
I figured that if you make pieces like you would a stick of rock then I should be able to make small flower pattern but keep quite a lot of the detail.
I started with the yellow centre and made a tube about  1cm in diameter, then added a pink tube that have been wrapped around in purple fimo, then packed in the spaces with white and then all around that a layer of a different colour pink....still following?
I then rolled the thick sausage like fimo tube flower into a thinner and thinner tube.
Using a flat craft knife (it was like rectangle blade, I found the angled blades did not cut cleanly) I sliced the tube up and placed them around the glass.
This is were it becomes a bit of trial and error, too thin and the fimo will just rip, too thick and the fimo will stand too far off the glass and look lumpy.
I found starting at the bottom working one ring of flowers at a time easiest, squishing each flower into each other.
Once all flowers where on I rolled the glasses in my hand to try and get the fimo as even as possible then baked.
You don't need to apply any solvent or glue in between the glass and the fimo it sticks itself.

After baking the fimo for the correct time and the correct temperature (remembering not to mistake the farrenhiehght for celceus or vice versa as I did once, filling my kitchen with toxic gas and very burnt fimo) let it cool down and then you can varnish it. I used duraclear gloss varnish which is a brush on polyurethane varnish which apparently dries flexible so figured that would be the best one. Once the varnish has dried you can pop in a candle.




Now you might think 'what's the point of going to all that trouble to use opaque polymer clay to cover a glass candle holder?  you won't see the candle'

Very pretty effect don't you think?

^.^