Anything Goes - Crafty Boots Blog Hop Challenge

A big hello to everyone taking part in the Crafty Boots Blog Hop Challenge and welcome to my blog.

The theme at Crafty Boots Challenges this fortnight is ‘Anything Goes’.  You can join in the challenge as normal but there are 12 extra chances for you to win a prize by joining the first ever Crafty Boots blog hop!

If you are joining in the hop you should have got here from Amy’s blog.  If you haven’t blog hopped before it is really simple, just start at the Crafty Boots Challenge blog and hop through the design team blogs in the order set out on that page.  Each of the design team members has a word or two for you to collect which will reveal a message at the end.  Once you have collected that message email it to bloghop@craftyboots.co.uk to be entered into the draw to win the prize of three digis of your choice from Hope Jacare Doodles.  You must also become a follower of all the design team’s blogs (and that of guest designer Claire) to be eligible to win the prizes.

This image is called Christmas Rooftop.  With Christmas in mind I decided it was time to experiment with putting images onto candles and decorating them - and perhaps create a nice present for someone special.

To be able to do this you have to print the image onto tissue paper.  I cut my tissue to roughly A4 size, then attached it around all of the edges to a blank sheet of light weight card using double sided tape.  When you size your digital stamp you need to remember that the tissue paper attached to the double sided tape will be wasted so you need to keep to the centre of the page.

Once you have the printed image you should trim around it and carefully place it on the candle (you can use a little glue as it will not show when you have finished - I used a glue stick to place the ivy leaves, as they were hard to keep in place on their own).  You then tightly wrap the candle in wax paper and, using a heat gun, warm the wax under the tissue.  The melted wax oozes through the tissue.  Once you have a thin film of wax on the top of the image you should stop heating it.  Allow the thin layer of wax to set; you can no longer see the tissue paper but you can still see the image clearly.  

One of the advantages of using a digital image is that you can change the size of the image to fit your candle.

You can now add some embellishments, the candle wax is reasonably soft, so you can easily push pins in to it.

I made the ivy leaves by punching them out of green tissue paper using my X Cut embossing punch and arranging them in a chain around the candle.

I was quite pleased with how these candles turned out but I thought that coloured images would also be nice.  However, Promarkers bleed when applied to tissue paper and my pencils were too faint when covered with wax.  My solution was to stamp an image in the normal way and to scan it onto my computer.  I then used my graphics programme to colour the image.  I was fairly pleased with the result, what do you think?

You can embellish your candles with all sorts of things.  I have used ribbons and peel-off's.  I have also added a small bell on a bow to one of them, you could try pushing brads or decorated pins into the candle wax.

Now back to the blog hop, don't forget that myself, and each of the design team members, has a prize of candy up for grabs, this will include a sample pack of the fantastic new Crafty Boots Deluxe Card, along with a few other goodies.  Be sure to leave a comment on each of our blogs and follow us to be in with a chance of winning our candy.

My word for the secret message is:

FOR

Your next stop is Emma M’s blog.

The deadline for both Anything Goes Challenge, and the blog hop (and the candy) is Sunday 11th December at 12 noon (UK time).