Travel tin candles

Last year at the craft fair my best sellers were scented candles in tins that I covered with designer paper and decorated with poinsettia's made out of pieces punched with the 5 petal flower punch. My entire supply was purchased by a single customer so early in the show that I didn't even have time to take a picture. So obviously this year I wanted to feature this item again, and was very excited to find these travel tin candles at Michael's.

Trouble was, when I got them home and started experimenting with my designer paper, I realized that the tins were pretty enough in themselves not to need to be covered. Why is this a problem? Well, I can't exactly re-sell these without doing anything to them.

I tried wrapping them with some SU ribbon, but the look wasn't quite right. That's when it hit me! Although in most cases I try to use only SU products in my projects, this particular case called for a product SU does not carry -- wired ribbon. Fortunately, I happen to have enough wired ribbon in my basement to last a lifetime or more, so I ran down and retrieved several different patters. I then selected a ribbon pattern to coordinate with each candle tin and tied the ribbon into fancy bows. This alone made the tins super showy!

Of course I had to stamp something in connection with the tin, so I grabbed a retired hostess set and my large tag punch and made some tags that I attached to the bow with gold cord. Now I'm just crossing my fingers that the tins with big bows will yield the same sort of success that last year's candles did.

One of the more fun things about stamping for the craft fair is that I get to dig out my retired stamps, like the tag stamp I used for this project. I really only use the retired stamps to make items for craft fairs, so each December is kind of like re-visiting old friends. And, of course, with the new retirement list coming out tomorrow, these old friends will soon be joined by a whole new batch of retirees. Do you have any guesses as to what will be on the list? I do, but I'm not telling! We'll just have to all tune in on Tuesday to see.

And for all those who asked about the candy tins I used in my last post, I honestly can't tell you where those particular tins came from because I got them in a bulk buy I participated in with a bunch of other demos this past winter. I didn't order these and I'm not sure of the source. However, I do know that you can get the same (or at least very similar) tins from specialty bottle at this link: http://www.specialtybottle.com/index.asp?PageAction=Custom&ID=47. The tins I used seem to be the 4 oz. size. Hope that helps!