Candles

A friend of mine was looking online for instructions on how to set pictures in to candles. She found a website that mentioned Avery Labels and something else. Personally I have NEVER used Avery Labels, and I don't know how they will melt into the wax.

So, I decided to do a quick tutorial on how I do candles.

You will need:
A Candle (any size and yes, dollar stor candles work the best because they are cheap)
A printer and a computer
Digital image of what you want on your candle
Tissue Paper
Printer Paper
Regular printing paper
Double sided sticky tape
Scissors
and either an embossing gun or a hair dryer

I am using pink paper to show how the tissue paper will be positioned on the printer paper. Card stock has a hard time going through some printers so this is why I suggest printer paper.

Step 1:
Use double side sticky tape on the top and bottom of the tissue paper and adhere the tissue paper to your printer paper. Tissue paper will get jammed in your printer so this is the easiest way to print on your tissue paper. (I used a glittery tissue paper so it will show up in the photos.) Load the paper into the printer when you are done.

Step 2:
You will need to use a word processing app for this step. I used WORD but you can use anything you are comfortable with.

Open the document and put your image into the worksheet. You will need to know how tall your candle is so you know what size to resize your photo too.

Once you resize the photo, print it out.

I suggest printing the image using a Fast Draft setting because higher settings often use too much ink which can bleed through the paper causing image to not look right.

Step 3:
Carefully remove the tissue paper from the sheet of printer paper. This is why I suggest only putting tape at the top and bottom of the sheet.

Step 4:
Cut the image down to the size and shape you want. In this demo I wrapped the tissue paper completely around the candle. You can, though, only use a small piece if you want.

Step 5:
Heat, quickly, the site you want to stick the image too. If you are using an embossing gun your candle will start to melt quickly so just a quick sweep across the candle should work. Now stick your image in place.

Can you see how the tissue paper appears wet or saturated? This is the paper melting into the candle.

Step 6:
Once the image is in place you will use the embossing gun or hair dryer to melt the rest of the image into the candle. You will need to constantly move the candle/heating tool so your candle will not melt and deform. You will see while your doing this that the tissue paper disappears into the candle wax.

Step 7:
Decorate! Once your image is set and the candle has cooled you can add ribbon, brads, what ever you want to it. Most times these candle will not be used so be creative!

HINT: This is even good to do for a date. Such as a wedding date and placed on tables during the reception. Or even as lit name tags to tell guest where to sit. If you are doing this you want to make sure that your image is small, and the edges do not go above the top of the candle. You don't want the fire department to make an unplanned visit!

What I've been up too!

After I went to convention in 2008, I had a falling out with my up-line. This lead to stamping/crafting/creating to not be "fun" anymore. For basically 4 years I have done nothing! A couple gifts here and there but nothing exciting. I mean, you can't even safely walk into my crafting room any more.

Well, this holiday I starting crafting again. Nothing big! Just old techniques that were easy and super fast to complete. Remember, I said I can not safely walking into my craft room. This means I can not safely get to items that I may need.

This year, in January, I joined a "Pay It Forward" post on Facebook. That meant that I had 1 year, 12 months to come up with a pay it forward gift to send to the person who originally posted the posting and then 1 gift to everyone who responded to my copy and pasted post.

My pay it forward gift came early. I want to say around April. My gift was homemade fudge from Maine. Yummy!

I stumbled and fought with what to make for the 2 I had promised gifts too. I bought wood letters thinking I would decorate them for the two ladies and ship them out. Hated it! I loved the one I did for my last name but hated the way theirs came out.

This one is mine!

I bought a wooden sign for one of the ladies and thought I'd mod podge pictures of her family on the back and then put her last name across it. Again, hated it! (Should have known better. I have never mod podged a day in my life!)

The other lady I thought I'd get a wooden cross, distress it and them embellish it and voila! You guessed it, hated it! Could not figure out how to embellish it the way I wanted too. And giving a way a plain distressed wooden cross was not what I wanted to do.

This is it...unfinished and on a shelf in my front hallway.

So then, with 6 weeks left of the year, it came to me. I will make snow globe ornaments with their pictures on it instead of using stamps. Ok! Now if you are thinking "great idea" lets stop for a minute. I just want to put it out there that printer ink and window sheets are not made for each other. Not even if you try to emboss the image when it first prints out, heat set the ink, leave it alone and hope it works....none of that does the trick and then you are left with a dark inky mess that looks gross. I was left with trying to figure out how to print an image that would look good in the inside of the clear globe, and still be transparent.

I did this ornament during a class that I had back when the set was new. Very simple project.

Velium was the answer! The ink stuck to the paper. It rolled up easy for insertion and unrolled easy when you slid it into the ornament. It is "somewhat" transparent. Everything I needed. So away I went.


Here is the one I made that needs to be sent to Maine:

I posted these on facebook and I quickly made a 3rd due to a close friend liking them. Then, when she seen her's she asked me to make her 2 more for presents for family members. I set a price and away I rode into the sunset (literally as it was time to go home).

The 3rd one I did.

I was hired to do these 2.

After all these project were said and done it was time to start thinking about wrapping and setting up the house for Christmas. I luckily already did ALL my shopping for my extending family/friends, one day I will share my secret with you, but I wanted a cute way to mark who they where for. Gift tags, but not the cheap store bought ones. At first I thought I'd have my son, who is 9 and wanted to make them for me, use my sizzix with the tag press and cut out tags then decorate with stickers, glitter, what ever. Problem, I don't know where my cutting plate is for the sizzix....remember the natural disaster that is my craft room?

I didn't give up though. I put my thinking cap on and came up with a plan. Formica chips....yep, those FREE things that the hardware store loves to give away to us crafters. SO I drove 13 miles across town one way and walked into the local craft...I mean, hardware store, and loaded up my "big" purse with FREE gift tags. (Yes, I changed to the "big" purse before I left home!)




Now, my 9 year old with all his imagination, was left alone with formica chips, dollar store stickers, elmers glue (I don't think my carpet will ever be the same again) and a movie on the TV. This is what we got:

I am planning on finishing them up with ribbon and attaching them to present (the names will be on the back). If people, like grandma and grandpa, want to keep the "gift tags" for ornaments they can. If not, that is fine too!

Have a great Christmas Season ya' all! And, keep checking back. I forgot how much fun this was and you never know what I will be up to in a month or so (or sooner!).