Saturday Spotlight - Whimsy candles!

Welcome to our 8th out of NINE "Countdown to Christmas" Saturday Spotlight!! So glad you could join me here and I really hope you are getting your Christmas crafts done...I'm still making up Christmas cards as I type!! (so behind and the shopping/candy making, etc are coming to an end!!) I am also gone this weekend as my family has some Christmas parties/concerts, etc to attend and I will not be here to approve your messages, but they will show up at least by Sunday...promise! :) I just appreciate your thoughts!! (I need to have them approved as there have been some very inappropriate ads that try to come through on my blog and it's rather frustrating! Not to "monitor" what people are commenting about because I've ALWAYS had people say such nice things and I hate to make it harder for people to say something nice...but I'm sure you can understand why I do this!)

Anyhow, now onto something else that's nice....

Perhaps you've made these before. I remember the first time I did one of these candles and I think I had wax ALL over the place!! teehee!! Well, I've improved since then and made many of these. I really LOVE candles and the warmth they bring around this time of year...so I thought I'd show you all HOW to stamp on candles!!! Let's take a look:

Here are a few things that you will *need* to be able to stamp on candles:
1. a candle!! (make sure it's large enough to accommodate your stamp images! (I pulled out one some of fun Whimsy Stamps to create this project!)
2. Wax paper long enough to wrap around your candle and to hold the ends, but NOT taller than what your candle is.
3. tissue paper (This will be what you stamp on) - and you'll need scissors
4. coloring media (I've used Copic markers here on mine as well as some Shimmerz for the duck image, but I've also used Sharpie markers and chalk before as well. Just be sure your media is not really watered down too much or it will saturate the tissue and not work well.)
5. Your stamps (If you don't want to color anything, you can use solid images too!), ribbons, tag, etc that you want to dress up your candle with. (I've decided to use some Stickles glitter glue for the water under the duck and cattails!) See below for other things I've used.
6. You will need a heat gun!


Step 1. I have used my Staz On black ink to stamp on the tissue paper so that I was sure there were no problems with inks running with the coloring, etc. I've used other different colors when stamping with solid images.
When you are done stamping all the images you want for your candle, trim with scissors as close as possible to all your images. (You may want to stamp a couple of extra images in case you've messed something up....believe me, I have!! lol!)

Step 2. Now that you've stamped and cut out the images, you are ready to color them in! As above, I've used the Copic markers to color mine in. Here, you can see that I've used some Angel Wings Shimmerz over the duck. (It does show up in the finished project...so shimmery and pretty!!)


Step 3. I wanted to show you a tip on these Whimsy Stamps...when I received the sentiment set, I wasn't sure how to put them back into the plastic baggie. But then I realized that each stamp/stamp set comes with a HARD laminated piece that has the name of the stamps along with the picture of each image! (Of course we can use this!) Because the images already come mounted on EZ Mount, they will cling to the laminated sheet!! So I just attached them to the sheet and when I want to use them, I pull out the sheet from the plastic baggie and all of the stamps stay right on the sheet, ready to be used!! (Just thought I'd share that tip about this cool stamps!)

While you're waiting for your stamped images on the tissue paper to dry, you can stamp up your tag(s) that you'd like to wrap around your candle. I used oval punches and one of the sentiments from the Whimsy Stamp collection.


Step 4. Now the cool part!! You are ready to place your finished stamped, colored tissue image onto the candle where you'd like to place it. Then you will need to wrap your wax paper around the candle in the center of your image and wrap it tightly around the candle. Keeping it tight will ensure that you image will be nice and flat on the candle..so this is important.
While you're holding the wax paper tight, you will turn on your heat gun and let it heat up for about 20 seconds or so, so that it's hot before you place it over the image.
Quickly run the heat gun over the image and you will begin to see changes around the image. The tissue will begin to melt into the candle and the outside of your wax paper may become a little wet looking. When you are satisfied that it's heated, you can remove your wax paper carefully from the candle. If all the tissue has NOT melted into the candle, wrap it up again with the wax paper and do it again.
*You can add as many images to your candle as you'd like...just use this same method in this step to melt into the candle. See below for what I did.*


Here's what my finished candle looks like with the tag added to it. I believe you can still see the Shimmerz in the duck image!! :)

Here's what the back of my candle look like!! I took a portion of the duck image and used it to go all the way around my candle. I stamped the cattail images about four times to have enough to go all the way around my candle. Turned out very cool!! I also put some stickles at the bottom where the water is. :)

Here's close-up of the sweet ducky image!! :) I think you can see here that there's a nice Shimmer on the duck from using the Shimmerz and I also have the Stickles showing at the bottom for the water on the candle!

FINSHED!! Of course a gift wouldn't be a gift if it wasn't totally wrapped, right?! I wanted to showcase what's inside by using a large gusset cello bag and tie it off with some yummy striped blue ribbon!! What a ducky gift given with love!!! :)

I sure hope you've enjoyed the project for today!! I thank you so much for stopping by and joining me each week for these projects!! And just think that next Saturday will be our last "countdown to Christmas"!! WOW! Time flew by!! Then at the beginning of the year, we will begin it by showing off some really awesome techniques!! :) Hope you join me in the New Year for that!! Hope you're all having a great weekend!! ((HUGS))