Mosaic Candle

I love to push the envelope with my scrapbook supplies. They are expensive and I like to see what else I can do with them.

I purchased some candles at IKEA recently, with the idea of decorating them with stamps and giving them as gifts for the holiday season. Then my mind got to wandering and I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I could put a photo on a candle?

As I processed that, I realized I could create a mosaic candle and that would really be cool!

Please understand that this is my first attempt and I learned some things along the way that could make a second candle (or your candle) much better.

Here's how I did it:

First, I gathered a sheet of Mosaic Moments paper in white, so it would vanish into the candle. I also grabbed a candle, my photos, a ruler, a knife and my Mosaic Moments mat.

I measured how large I wanted the mosaic image and cut my paper accordingly. Then, I cut up my photos and applied them to the paper the same way I would if I was creating a page in my scrapbook.

 Once that was finished, I cut a piece of tissue paper slightly smaller than an 8.5x11" piece of cardstock and taped it all around the edges. It is important to get the tissue paper totally flat and secured all the way around the page. Otherwise, it will tear in your printer and you will have to dig out little sheets of tissue paper. (This is not fun, trust me).

Then, I made a copy of mosaic and printed it on the tissue paper. I let it dry for a while and then I cut out the image and, with my heat tool, melted it into the candle until it looked like this:

The cool part is it worked and the tissue paper became part of the candle. 

I also learned that you should stick with scenery ... notice how blurry the photo of me ended up when printed on tissue paper ...

I also learned that you might want to start with a smaller image, rather than trying to wrap it all the way around the candle. Mine got off somewhere and I ended up with some folds and wrinkles.

But, I still love how it looks and I plan to make more to perfect the technique!