May all your bacon burn.

Every year, BeardBoy and I get a beautiful enormous tree to fill our apartment -- we have 20' ceilings, so a huge tree is one of those luxuries that just seems ... right, you know? But BeardBoy's favorite winter tradition is not the classy and elegant monster Balsam Fir, but the nerdy little rosemary tree that lives on the kitchen table.

 

This is last year's tree. Spot the nerdery!

We did eventually put a papercraft TARDIS on top, but doesn't it look like it needs more love?  So. What's more appropriate to put on top of a nerdy rosemary tree than a salty little fire demon? So I set out to make a Calcifer tree-topper.

Step 1 (unpictured): Acquire a cheap plastic bauble and a battery-powered votive candle. Mine came from Michaels.

Step 2: cut off the neck so you can trace your votive and get a hole of roughly the right size, then cut a hole of roughly the right size.

 

Step 3: Insert candle and secure with hot glue.

 

Step 4: THE FUN BEGINS. Hold the bauble upside down, and starting at what will be the top of Calcifer's head, drop hot glue in flamey-looking clumps until the entire thing is covered. Mine totally melted a little, but I'm still here, so the fumes can't have been too awful.

 Step 5: You don't need me to tell you to decorate the thing, do you? I got glass paint in 4 colors (golden yellow, true orange, red, and crimson), did the yellow all over then decreasing amounts of the other colors in light > dark over the flamey bits to highlight.

 Continue to decorate. Add googly eyes. 

 mm, no, not that big

 That's better! I added paper logs to make him a little more secure in his perch on top of the tree (and to hide the mechanism of the battery as well).

 

There's the silly little tree, all decked out. Next step: 4th doctor scarf garland! 

Happy holidays, all!