Candlelight and Silhouettes

I love November. After the summer and the autumn, November is finally the month when I start my retreat into the home. The long, dark evenings start early and are perfect for curling up in front of the fire with a good book, a cuddly child, a tender loved one or a glass of mulled wine (or preferably all of these at the same time... yes, I intend to get a large sofa, soon!). And then there is also the anticipation of advent and pre-Christmas which means going out to buy presents, wrapping them and spending time making presents for friends and family. I just love it and can't wait for it.

Candles are an essential part of my autumn ritual. They get lit every evening when the family sits down for dinner. And when my daughter came home from school with a silhouetted candle decoration, I decided to copy her and make my own.

Here is what I used to make it: an A4 sheet of black cardboard, different colour translucent paper, scissors, a scalpel, a ruler, a lead pencil and a glue stick. I started out by roughly designing my silhouette on a piece of paper (cheapskate I am, I used some scrap paper, hence the green dots). The buildings are all well-known sights of my home-town, Dublin.

I transferred my design onto the cardboard using the help of a ruler and a pencil. I first cut out the straight bits with my scissors. The windows had to be cut out with a scalpel. Make sure you put some newspaper underneath so you can press down hard and cut out the little windows. I did it all free hand and actually like the irregularity of the design, but you can of course draw it all with the help of ruler etc.

To make it a bit more colourful, I glued some colourful transparent paper behind some of the buildings. When you do this, make sure you do it all in one go and do not hold your silhouette up to admire it! You might mix up the front and the back of the silhouette and glue paper against the front by mistake - which is exactly what happened to me *duh*. I had to go over the glue marks with black marker to hide them...

The princess of crafts aka my daughter also got stuck in her own project and created another silhouette:









Finally, glue your silhouette on an A4 size piece of translucent paper. I used orange paper and then cut it in a semicircle shape - looks like an autumn sunset when propped against a candle lantern.

The silhouette now graces the mantlepiece until it will be taken over by Christmas decorations. Can you tell which Dublin buildings I have tried to represent???