Schwibbogen Designing - Part 1

The next decoration I started working on is a Schwibbogen (German Candle Arch).

I had to read about what these are as I had never seen one before. I decided to go with the original 11 candle design and wanted one to be really big to be able to put a village of houses under it.

My first run was making one that fit onto a deck that I had from 3DelongDesign on Etsy. I then took some photos I have of trees in our area and used them to make an outline for the arch. Most of these trees are the in the back parking lot of where I work. This design is about 8 inches tall and 12 inches wide.

I then decided to scale it up to be cuttable to the full size of my laser machine. This is now 2 1/2 feet wide and 1 1/2 feet tall. I changed the front arch to not have the trees as I am going to be adding some candle cup decorations. The candles are neat as well. They are powered by 2 AA batteries and when you turn them on, will run for 6 hours and turn off. 18 hours later, they will turn on again. Nice!

I then started painting. The trees will get a frosting of snow. The front bar is painted in metallic flake to go back to original Schwibbogens that were made of metal in the Ore mountains of Saxony.

Weinachtpyramide Designing

Designing a working Weinachtpyramide (German Christmas Pyramid) was a little trickier than I thought. I went through a half a dozen major prototypes and about a dozen more little tweaks to be able to make them with what I have on hand.

The biggest part I had to keep tweaking was the spindle. In normal Weinachtpyramides, there is a glass bead that the brass bar spins on. I had bought a bunch of tinker toy style cogs and dowels and wanted to use those. So, I ended up crafting a special way to be able to hold a finishing nail to the deck, then hold it to the dowel.

My current design uses simple votive candles. However, I am making some additional pieces to be able to hold the standard taper candles that are used in Germany.