Halloween At The Cemetery, a Candle Holder

More Halloween! This month, Alpha Stamps sent me some small reliquaries. What to do, what to do? I'm not sure what made me think of making a candle holder, but now that it's done, I'm glad I did. This will be such fun to add to the mantle this year. *Note, to avoid any sort of fire hazard, I'll be sure to only use a battery operated candle in this holder.

I painted all the tombstones with a mixture of paints (tutorial at the bottom of this post) and added papers, charms, rub on type, and collage sheet images to create five different tombstones. This little graveyard is littered with pumpkins, a witch's broom, and bones that were snapped off of a plastic skeleton. It's pretty easy to just break those bones off at the joints.

Here lies Edgar Allan Poe.  I used rub on type to indicate the year of his death, and for the RIP written on the gravestone to the right. To make the bats fly, I used a thin wire and literally just shoved it into the rubber bodies of the bats (poor things!). The wire was sandwiched between the two pieces of chipboard before gluing the gravestones together. Clothespins were used to hold the pieces tight while drying.

A black cat, a giant crow, and more bones. So spooky! I wrapped the candle with a black mesh ribbon before placing it into the holder.

I love the sentiment on this final tombstone: "Gather ye blossoms while ye may."

I made the base for the candle holder from corrugated cardboard. I used a large can to trace around a circle, and cut two of those out using an x-acto knife. Glue these together to make a thicker piece This will elevate the candle and give the tombstones something to lean against. Glue this double thick base to another piece of cardboard.

You can make the base any shape you want; I elected to make mine a larger circle. Cut that shape out with an x-acto knife, and you are ready to go. I added a little moss to help hold my tombstones in place, then glued them to the inner circle with a glue gun. Most of the other elements, like the bones and pumpkins, were also attached with the hot glue.

For a complete list of supplies, click here. Spooky Halloween!