Modern Menorah

Modern Menorah by Irit Shalom

Hello my dear crafty friends and welcome to my November Makin's Clay® post.  This time I made something for our Jewish Holidays for our Holidays theme.  So say Hello to my totally Makin's Clay® modern Menorah.  Most of you think that a Menorah is a very uniformed classic ritual candle holder for Hanukkah.  It was this way for centuries. But right now you can make/buy and use any Menorah that fits the rules.  The rules are very simple: 8 candles should be on the same level or even different levels, but the 9th one - the candle named SHAMASH and used to light all other candles should be on a different, higher level. That's actually all you need to make a pretty KOSHER Menorah that will be used even by most orthodox Jews.  So I made a full step by step tutorial to show you how to make this pretty modern version of a Menorah and you can make one for your Jewish friends or for yourself.

Materials:

Makin’s Clay®  

• Black, Natural

Makin's®

• Texture Sheets Set A - cobblestones
• Triangles Clay Cutters

Makin’s Professional® 

• Roller and Cutters Set®
• Cutting Mat

Silver acrylic paint
Silver glitter

Instructions:

Step by step tutorial:

1. Use 2 packages of Natural Makin’s Clay®  and 1/2 of Black clay package. Mix most of it to this dark grey color and leave the 1/3 in a black and white marbled kind of mixing. Use the clay roller to make a thick rectangle with the marbled part in the middle of it. Dont' try to cut the straight edges. We really want this kind of non-straight rectangle for this project.

2. Use cobblestone texture sheet from Texture Sheet Set A  and roll the texture all over the piece as shown.

3. Roll the upper third of the mixed clay to the back and the front third to the front as shown.  Now make marks for all 8 candle holes we are going to make with a straw. Make one single hole on the front part for the " user" candle as shown.

4. This is how is should look with all 9 holes done. Leave the piece to dry overnight or even more.

5. Make 9 Stars of David using the smallest triangle clay cutter. Each star is actually made of two cut pieces and then, when connected, the hole was made on the top of each star

6. Make rectangle of left over clay to fit the sentiment we are going to stamp.  Stamp the sentiment as shown. I used Inspired by Stamping stamps, but any Hanukkah big sentiment will work just the same way. Let the sentiment piece dry.

7.Glue all 9 Stars of David over the Menorah as shown. Glue the sentiment fragment on the front as shown.  Add some silver glitter stripes with a BoBunny stickable stencil as this is the only stencil you can use over the rounded dry shape of your art piece. Let the glitter paste dry.  Cover the inside of the stamped sentiment with silver acrylic paint (I used DecoArt) and wipe the paint from the front of the sentiment rectangle, leaving the paint inside the stamped words.

8. Add some glitter on the top of the sentiment piece.

This is how this piece looks from the top without candles in it.

 And this is how it looks with candles.

For now my new Menorah is waiting to be used.

So Happy Hanukkah to all my Jewish friends and Merry Christmas to all my Christian friends around the world and Happy New Year (in advance) to the Universe!