How to create Candle Symbol in LaTeX

Here is a custom-designed Bezier-curve flame in TikZ combined with a dotless letter ‘i’:

Here is the source:

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{tikz}

\newcommand{\iflame}[2]{%
  \begin{tikzpicture}[scale=#1]
    \fill[color=#2]
      (0,0) .. controls (-1.5,1.25) and (.5,2) .. (-.2,4)
            .. controls (1,2.5) and (1,.5) .. (0,0);
  \end{tikzpicture}
}

\newcommand{\icandle}[1]{%
  \rlap{\kern-.0275em\raisebox{1.2ex}{\iflame{.035}{#1}}}$\i$%
}

\begin{document}

\noindent
el\icandle{red}te\\
el\icandle{orange}te\\
el\icandle{yellow!80!red}te\\
el\icandle{gray}te\\
elite\\
\par

\end{document}

If you find the serifs on the ‘i’ to be undesirable, you can substitute instead a vertical rule of height 1ex, depth 0ex, and width .7pt, with about .09em kerning on each side, and then lower the flame by .1ex. I tried it both ways and I personally like it better with the serifs on the ‘i’.

Addendum

I just noticed today that the middle three letters of “elite” are “lit” and that the last four letters are “lite”. There is also the visual pun “e-lite”, e.g., “electronic light.”

Here is a text-based "candle", obtained by stacking \sun (from wasysym) on top of \i using the accents package. Some scaling is provided by \scalebox from graphicx. It even scales based on the font selection (like \large, \Large, ...).

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}% http://ctan.org/pkg/graphicx
\usepackage{wasysym}% http://ctan.org/pkg/wasysym
\usepackage{accents}% http://ctan.org/pkg/accents
\newcommand{\sunI}{\ensuremath{\accentset{\scalebox{.5}{\sun}}{\mbox{\i}}}}%
\begin{document}
elite~el\sunI te
\end{document}​

I'm not sure how candle-ish of a look you're after... :-|

By adjusting the vertical postion of the symbols, I think that this can work:

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{txfonts}
\usepackage{stmaryrd}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{accents}
\newcommand{\candle}{\ensuremath{\accentset{\scalebox{.5}{\(\varspadesuit\)}}{\scalebox{.6}{\(\talloblong\)}}}}
\begin{document}
elite el\candle{}te
\end{document}