Luminaria

Last year I gave each of my Mother's Group girls one of these Lumiarias for Christmas, along with a couple of my other close friends.  The girls don't normally give each other any gifts, but sometimes I think it's nice to give each a "token gift" in appreciation of the 23 years of friendship.  We all met at the Baby Health Clinic when our first borns were only a few months old and even after all these years, we still try to meet on a fortnightly basis.  Next weekend we are all getting together (including the husbands) for an early Christmas dinner, and on the first weekend in December, we will all be together again to celebrate the wedding of one of the children (she is 23!).   This will be the 2nd wedding our group will have celebrated together.  Between us we have 17 children, so I can see there will be more weddings to come further down the track.

Anyway ...... back to the Luminaria.  Tomorrow at Alice in Paperland I am teaching some ladies how to make these little lamps which are lit with battery operated tealights.   Of course you wouldn't want to use regular tealights as there could be a disaster just waiting to happen - paper and flame just don't go well together.

For this luminaria, I have chosen to use some shimmer cardstock, vellum and silver snowflake stickers for decoration.   I have coloured the insides of the snowflakes with a brush marker (coloured from the back for a soft look) and the windows have been cut with Spellbinders Nestabilities - Labels Eighteen.

From above you can see the tealight sitting in the base which is made from a piece of leftover cardstock with all four sides folded 1/4" and a 1 3/8" circle punched in the centre.  This stops the tealight from moving around inside when it is being moved.

I'm sure the ladies will all have an enjoyable morning tomorrow.  I know when I am crafting with others I always have a good time.

Happy crafting!