Coastal Christmas Candle

It's another blustery, snow covered day here at the Chateau!  What better day than to show you this beachy candle that I created!  One of my favorite supporters of my Etsy shop (who also happens to be a friend!) commissioned me to create for her a "Coastal Christmas" jar candle.  For someone who has always lived in a cold climate, I must admit that the idea of a coastal Christmas is a relatively new idea for me!

Of course, for those of you who dwell in warm climates, this is nothing new to you!  So, in order to get some inspiration for this piece, I decided to Google "coastal Christmas", and this is what I came up with:

hahahahah!!  Not quite the look I was going for!

I recalled seeing a beautiful copy of vintage French Christmas sheet music over at The Graphics Fairy, which is my favorite place to find gorgeous images.  If you have never visited, be sure to check it out!  Karen never disappoints, and shares some beautiful images with us daily!

Aaaaah!  This is more of what I had in mind!  I added this pretty sand dollar from a piece of scrapbooking paper that I had purchased in Maui last winter.  I wish that I had gotten more of this paper, as I've never seen any like it here!

 I t's a bit hard to see here, but I also added some really neat paper (from the same Maui shop) that looks like woven grass cloth.  In person, it is amazingly realistic!

Of course I had to glitter the entire candle, so it will look magical when lit!
I just looked down at my keyboard as I was typing this, and I noticed glitter all over the keyboard.  Hmmmm...........now how did that happen??!!

And to further tie in the coastal and Christmas themes, I added a couple of jingle bells, that I painted an antique bronze tone and applied a bit of glitter to, as well as a pretty shell that I picked up on one of our trips.  I used my handy dandy dremil tool to drill a hole in the shell, then added some glitter and hung from a gold cord.  Oh, I added some of my favorite taupe seembinding which I crinkled, and made a generous bow and hung the bells on the ends.

I'm really happy with how it turned out!  I think I'm getting the hang of this "Coastal Christmas" thing!
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The Graphics Fairy