Stamping onto Candles

I first heard about this technique from a friend and when I become stuck what to make my Mum for mothers day I decided to give it a go. The results where brilliant (if I say so myself) so I thought I would try it again and experiment with heat embossing - my favourite!

I also thought I would share a quick tutorial with you as well.

Here is one of the candles that I heat embossed with blue glitter WOW powder. The picture doesn't show the sparkle very well.

What you will need:

A white candle, some white tissue paper, embossing powder, heat gun, talcum powder to stop the static, a large and a small paintbrush, a stamp of your choice and versamark ink.

Instructions:

1) Cut a piece of the tissue paper to the right size to cover the candle. You will be wrapping this around the candle and you don't want any overlap.
2) Brush some of the talcum powder onto the tissue paper using the large paintbrush and tip off any excess.
3) Ink up your stamp with the versamark ink and stamp it onto the tissue paper, pressing fairly hard to make sure all the image comes out. Then carefully take the stamp off being careful not to tear the tissue.
4) Before the ink dries, pour the embossing powder over the stamped image and return the excess to the pot. The heat the image until all the powder is melted. Repeat this as necessary - with the snowflake candle I stamped my image twice which was enough to cover the candle.
5) When you have your image ready, cover the back of it with a small amount of Pritt Stick and wrap around the candle. This keeps the image from moving when heating.
6) Some people prefer to use baking parchment when heating - wrap this around the candle and heat through it, however I didn't use this. Apply the heat gun to the image on the candle, being careful not to heat the wax too much. You can see through the tissue paper and easily identify when it is melted to the candle because it becomes more see through.

The key is not to heat the wax too much and do it in small sections. I heat a bit and then rub it over with my fingers to make sure it's stuck down and it's smooth. This does mean I get covered in wax but once it's dry it easily peels off!

Some of the edges might be harder to stick down, so if you do find they are curling, apply a little bit more of the pritt stick and heat again, smoothing the tissue down with your finger immediately after removing the heat.

Then you have your finished candle. Here are some more that I made now I've got the hang of it:

The two on the outside are both heat embossed and the butterfly ones in the middle are just coloured images using pro markers before the tissue is heated onto the candle. After heating I then applied some stickles glitter glue to the image.

This technique did require a lot of practice so before going for the best one, buy some cheap candles that you can practice with. They make great presents. I have wrapped mine in cellophane and tied with ribbon and added a small tag to them:

Mothers Day Crafting

Mothers day posed me with several problems, the main one being that I had lost my craftiness and wasn't sure what to make. I had decided on a design for a card:

I heat embossed the flowers at the bottom with white powder on brown kraft card and painted with vintage mica powders. The strip on the left is a swirly embossing folder brushed with distress ink and mounted onto a scallop border. The butterflies were heat embossed with white powder onto vellum and used as an overlay to purple butterflies to make them 3D.

Once I had the card I thought I would keep the butterfly/flowers theme. I had been meaning to try stamping on candles for a while so, after a few attempts, I managed two different candles in co-ordinating designs:

Once I had got the hang of it, it's quite an easy technique, but if you are doing it for the first time then make sure you have a spare candle to practise on first.

Then I thought of making a plaque. I wanted to include a quote but couldn't find anything appropriate and along with my craft inspiration, my writing inspiration had disappeared too. I also wanted to try the letters with some ultra thick embossing powder but that idea fell through so they stayed matt with just the patterned papers for decoration.

However, with my love for embossing powders I couldn't create something for Mum without embossing it, so I used my new purple pearlescent powder for the tag and that turned out brilliantly. Sometimes the powders aren't thick enough to cover the colour underneath so I did colour the tag in purple with my pro markers first. But I needn't have bothered because the powder covered it perfectly.

Mum loved all her presents, especially the candles. I think I am going to make more of these now I know how it's done and plan on selling them at a craft fair I've got planned for the end of the year. Some Christmas themed ones I think!