
How to make a candlestick made of polymer clay in the New Year theme, step-by-step photos and description of the sculpting process
One of the most beloved and anticipated by allholidays is New Year. Time of magic, gifts, warm hugs, joy and comfort. Home decorations for this celebration are always chosen especially carefully. And how great it would be not to buy, but to make cute details for interior decor with your own hands. After all, such crafts will not only fit perfectly into the environment, they always carry a piece of creative energy of needlewomen and masters of decorative and applied arts. In this article, we will create a candlestick from polymer clay with our own hands. Plastic is an amazing material for creativity. It has a rich color palette, a lot of additional tint effects, for example, mother-of-pearl or metallic shine, transparency, glitter and much more.Create a candle holder with your children or youryour other half. On the eve of the holiday, you will not only get a colorful and relevant decorative element, but also great pleasure from the molding process itself. You will be able to give your family and friends a warm souvenir that will last for many years, giving light, warmth and positive emotions. For the candlestick you need:
- Plastic of red, green, green, brown and orange colors;
- Stationery knife;
- Universal vainer sheet;
- Golden color potal;
- Candle (it is advisable to choose the one with a metal frame);
- Round form (cutter). Its diameter should be slightly larger than the diameter of the candle (we have 4.5 cm);
- Toothpick;
- Stack with a ball on the end;
- Stamp with a ribbed surface (we took a shaving machine);
- Pasta machine or acrylic rolling pin (you can also use a glass bottle);
- Glass with a diameter of 10 cm;
- Artificial stamens (golden) are sold in floristic or needlework shops;
- Green flora wire 0.8 mm;
- Green flora wire 0.5 mm;
- Tools for working with wire (pliers and cutters);
- Sponge;
- A bit of food film;
- Varnish for plastics;
- Fine brush and acrylic paint (brown).
Before you start working, you need toPrepare the surface. Polymer clay absorbs small debris very quickly. Knead the clay thoroughly. Petals. Take red clay and form a sausage 1 cm in diameter. Use your fingers to gently flatten it on one side so that a drop is formed in the cut. It is necessary to cut the cane into petal blanks. You will need pieces of different thicknesses. The thicker the cut, the larger the petal will be. From the thinnest ones we will make inner petals, from the larger ones - middle and outer. For one flower we will need 3 pieces of each size. Use your fingers to flatten the blanks and place them in a veiner. To make the veins of the petals uniform, go over the veiner with a rolling pin. This is what we got from blanks of different sizes. From green polymer clay we make a cane of the same shape 1.5 cm in diameter. The cut should also be teardrop-shaped. We cut large blanks and using a veiner and a rolling pin we make leaves like these (see photo). For one flower we will need 3 leaves.Stamens. We collect several stamens together.You need to tie a knot around them with a thread so that our stamens stay together and don't fall apart. Now on a piece of flor wire 5 - 6 cm long, make a half-loop on one edge (just bend the end a little with round-nose pliers). Take a stamen bunch and secure the wire by pinching the loop to the end slightly below the knot that holds the stamens together. Cut off any excess thread tails.
We form flowers.Take three small red petals and attach them around the stamens. The second circle of three larger petals is also attached under the small ones in a checkerboard pattern. Similarly, we attach the three largest petals. The last circle consists of three green leaves. We carefully attach the ends of each petal, pulling the plastic along the wire just a little bit.
For one candlestick 3 will be enoughflowers, with a diameter of about 4 cm. Of course, you can make flowers of different sizes and splendor, as your imagination suggests. Now, on one end of a piece of 0.5 mm wire 5 - 6 cm long, make a loop. You will need several of these blanks. Roll balls of 5 mm in diameter from orange plastic. Put the balls on the wire loops and smooth out the joints carefully. Now, on the opposite side of the ball, use a toothpick to make grooves diverging from the center to the sides. They should not be cut, but pressed (see photo).
We roll a 0.7 droplet from salad thermoplastic– 1 cm in length. Now we put our salad drop on the ribbed stamp (in our case it is the handle of a razor covered with cling film) and press it with our finger. We have a leaf with veins. We do not remove it from the stamp and attach a 0.5 mm wire with a loop to its base. We press the loop into the clay a little, wrap the edges and smooth the joint (see photo).
Roll out the green clay into a 0.5 mm layerthickness. Cut out a circle with a diameter of 10 cm, using a glass. Put a candle on the circle and see if there should be room left to attach our flowers and berries. Cut out 2 more large circles. Now take a small round mold and cut out holes in the center of two circles. Place our circles with holes on top of the first large circle made of green thermoplastic. Lay them out carefully and evenly. We have a place for the candle. It should be easy to put in and take out of it. Smooth out the edges of the cut layers.
We take a flor wire of a larger diameter and makea loop at the end. Form a ball of 10 - 15 mm in diameter from red thermoplastic, secure the loop inside the ball and smooth out the joints. It is necessary to finely tear the gold leaf and roll the ball of red thermoplastic in it. You will need several of these blanks, as well as the orange ones.
We knead the brown thermoplastic.You need to prepare 2 pieces of 0.8 mm wire with loops, as we did before. From brown plastic, form a droplet with a length of 2 cm, a base width of 1 cm and fix it on the wire. There should be two blanks, the places where the droplet and the wire are connected should be carefully smoothed out as in the previous times. Now roll out a sausage 7 mm in diameter and give it a droplet shape in the cut (like the red one). Cut thinly. Put our blanks on a sponge (a regular one for washing dishes will do). Roll the blanks with a stack of balls, make them thinner and concave (or convex). Take our droplet and start attaching the petals overlapping. Make the topmost ones closed, and gradually open the next ones.
Assembly: Remove the candle from the metal frame.Now install the metal part in the designated place. On all the blanks, you need to cut off the excess wire. To do this, measure the height of the green base for the candle, and cut off everything else. Now we put in our red and brown flowers and berries in any order you like. You can twist several berries together.
We put it to bake according to the instructions on theclay packaging. After the product has cooled, take some brown paint and tint the orange berries in the center. When the paint dries, cover the product with varnish. After the varnish has completely dried, insert the candle back and our wonderful New Year's candlestick is ready to bring light and joy.