STAMPING ON A CANDLE

This is a long-term Gunnadoo that I have finally actually done!!!  For years I've been reading about stamping onto candles but never quite got around to trying it out .  Basically you stamp onto white tissue paper, then apply it to a candle by holding it in place and heating gently with a craft heat gun (whilst avoiding third degree burns to the fingers) until it fuses with the candle. 

This illustrates why the Papertrek blog is good for me - having decided to do a different thing every week means raiding the dark recesses of the brain for new/old ideas, and not just repeating the same old same old.  (Having said that, even after doing the blog for over two years now, I still haven't quite mastered putting the photos where I want them to be on the page, so apologies for the layout - I must add learning to do this properly to my "Gunnadoo" list!!).

Anyway....back to craft.......Before trying this technique I suspected that the end result would look like a candle with a dodgy piece of stamped tissue paper stuck to it.  The good news is that I was wrong.  Even although I used a piece of tissue paper that came inside the box with my latest pair of shoes, and some very cheap dye ink, the results were great - you couldn't really see the tissue at all, and the image was soft but distinct.

CLOSE-UP OF STAMPED TISSUE PAPER ON CANDLE

This was the point when I became overconfident and tried a huge red stamped rose on a big blue candle......well, the colours worked OK.  I thought the ink might be translucent and that I would end up with a purple rose, but that didn't happen.  Even the white tissue blended OK with the blue candle.  What did happen was that with my handheld craft heat gun I was unable to apply an even amount of heat all over the paper so that some pieces failed to blend in with the candles and others sank in.  Also where the wax was overheated and slightly melted its colour changed to a lighter blue.  As you can see from the photo, the result was "ordinary" to put it mildly.

 

WHAT NOT TO DO

STAMPED CANDLE

I guess what I've learned is that small motifs on white candles are easiest to apply, and that if you were, say, intending to do 50 large candles for wedding tables, I'd buy a few more than needed, spend some time practising, and have a few spares as well!!

I haven't burnt the candle to see whether or not there are any implications when the level of the paper is reached.  I don't anticipate any dramas but wouldn't leave them unattended until I definitely knew the paper wasn't going to burn!!!  (Another little something to try before you use them at a social occasion!).