Candle wall sconces

This weeks project is completely different than what I started out with. Last week I asked for your suggestions for an Olympic themed project. Lots of good ideas, and a lot of you wanted something with an Olympic torch.
I gave this a lot of thought and decided that a wooden torch was probably not a project that would hold wide appeal. This led me to the notion of creating a torch intarsia: piecing together various types of wood into a torch "picture". (If you are interested in this process, you can see a scarecrow I made a couple years ago.) After designing a few templates, it quickly became clear that a torch would only require a few cuts. Not much of an intarsia project.
Still exploring the idea of a torch, I thought perhaps a wall sconce shaped like a torch would be interesting. I spent quite a bit of time designing one, but kept running into design questions. Mostly, the candle seemed to be competing with the shape of the torchs flame making the overall concept confusing.
Sometimes just spending time in my shop leads to inspiration. Looking through my scraps of lumber, I discovered a tiger-stranded bamboo board a viewer sent me a while back. It has a crazy grain pattern that reminds me of flames. Suddenly I had the inspiration I needed. Though not Olympic themed, it retains the torch idea and is something that will hold wider appeal, especially after the 2014 games are over.
Plans

• WWMM Wall sconces (pdf)
• SketchUp file