Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Vellum Luminary


This is a fun project and very easy! I purchased an electric "candle" which had a waxy overlay decorated for Valentine's Day, but since I could only use it for that month, I decided to take off the hollow candle part and put a custom luminary over it. Since there's no open flame, these are safer than putting vellum over a regular candle. Here's how it's done:
  1. With the Eyelet Border punch, punch along both 11" ends of a piece of vellum cardstock.
  2. With the paper cutter, trim off both of these punched edges so you have two strips of eyelet borders. Set aside.
  3. Then, trim of 1/2" more (straight) along the 11" side to layer over the top of one of the eyelet borders. (This makes the top and bottom edges stronger and also makes it a little less transparent, giving it more appeal.) Set aside.
  4. Slide the Embossing Buddy across the large sheet left and stamp the outline of the dogwood blossoms in Versamark 4 times across, making sure to leave 1/2" border on the two ends.
  5. Sprinkle with gold embossing powder, shake off excess, and heat set.
  6. Flip the cardstock over and color in the images on the backside, REMEMBERING that vellum does not dry fast at all, so don't run your hand over where you've colored. The colors I used are as follows:
Old Olive for the center of the flowers, with Green Galore "bleeding" from the center out onto a bit of the petals; Pretty in Pink was applied to the gold veins of the petals only; Close to Cocoa was the "burnt" ends of the petals; Going Grey for the stem; Green Galore was stroked across the leaves to give highlight, followed by Always Artichoke.

To put it together:

Use vellum adhesive to "tack" the short ends to make the cylinder (overlap 1/2"), then affix eyelet border along both ends with the straight edge on the ends of the cylinder; Affix the 1/2" straight piece on top of the top edge eyelet. Punch 2 holes at the top and bottom edges of the cylinder where all the pieces of vellum overlap and use a brad to hold together.