Hope

Sweet Pea Stamps

Today is my day to showcase and image from Sweet Pea Stamps and I have chosen to work with the beautiful image 'Hope' by Rebecca Sinz which is available from the Sweet Pea Store in both rubber and digi.

I have not made any of my candles recently and now seem to be on a bing with them.  I did one a couple of weeks ago, this one today and another one in the pipeline which I am trying to do a video tutorial on - that is a challenge in itself lol.  Anyway, here is todays candle :)

So many folks ask how I do these candles hence the trying to make the video but in the meantime I will do my best to explain the basics.  I start by using temporary adhesive spray on a piece of paper about 220gms in weight and then lay the tissue paper over the top doing my best to avoid any wrinkles.  Next I trim the excess tissue paper off so it will run through my printer with no issues.  To prepare my wrappers I use a template I made of the candle sizes I use regularly.  I then browse through my photos to find a suitable background.  For this wrapper I used two images, the sky was a photo I took in the Maldives on my 25th Wedding Anniversay - a fabulous second honeymoon lol, and for the foreground I used a beach scene taken while lying on my belly to get the rocky outcrop.  Next, in Photoshop, I imported the two images and removed the sections I did not want, here it was all the see and sky from the beach photo so I was only left with the rocky outcrop which I thought would be perfect to place the digi on.  Next I removed all the background from the digi so I was left with the equivalent of a .png image which I could then hand colour in line with the Terms of Use of most of the image we use these days.

I use crayons to colour my candle wrapper images as I find they work the best, this one was coloured with Faber Castelly Polychromos

And here is the image fully coloured.

Next I tried something new and tried rubber stamping a gold border, sentiment and a floral design to represent stars.  The sentiment worked fine and the flower stars were not to bad but the border was a disaster.

When working with candles it is imperative to think of fire safety, I would so hate to be the cause of a fire in somebody's home from one of my candles, so I have a couple of produces which are totally safe for decorating.  One is a gold dust and the other is a water based varnish.  To cover up the rubbish gold border I used the gold dust and tried to get a a vibrant distressed look.  This was applied with a soft sponge for the top and then I used a wide paintbrush to sweep around the upper section of the wrapper. To balance the gold out I added some more to the rocky outcrop at the bottom of the candle. Finally a quick layer of the candle water based varnish to add a shine and all done :)

Ingredients:-

• Image - 'Hope' by Rebecca Sinz
• Colouring Medium - Faber Castelly Polychromos
• From my Stash - gold dust, candle varnish and the candle.

I am entering into the following challenges:-

• 2 Creative Chicks (M,P1,JFF)  # 25 Anything Goes (no cards)
• Altered Eclectics (M,P7) Anything Goes (Altered Art/Mix Media only, cards or ATC will be deleted)
• Creative Craft Cottage Digi Creations (2W, P1/15, E3) #23 Add Some Sparkle
• My Craft Creations (M,P1) Anything Goes
• Paradise of Stamps (2W,P1/15,E3) #16 Bling
• Rhedd's Creative Spirit (M,P1,E3) Anything Goes (Mixed Media Altered Art / Mixed Media ONLY)
• SLS Lines Challenge (M, P12, SIO,E2) # 8 Anything Goes 
• The Crafting Cafe (M,P1,E1) Flights of Fancy
• Allsorts W,3E   bring on the bling 
• Brown Sugar – W, E2 - No. 143 - Anything Goes
• Crafty Catz - W, 3E – #276 - Things with Wings
• Digitally Sweet - M, Digital images/projects - (Does not have to be 100% digital.) - No. 133 - April - Anything Goes
• Fairy Tale - 2W, 2E - No. 116 - (W1 of 2) - Now or Never (use a stamp you rarely or never used) (FIRST TIME TO USE ANGEL STAMP (NEW) AND FIRST TIME USING STAMPED SENTIMENT STAMP WHICH I HAVE HAD FOR 5 YEARS LOL)
• Stempelsonnen Challenge - 2W, 3E, stamp as main focus - No.139 - (W2 of 2) - Anything Goes with a hand-colored stamp
• Aud Sentiments Challenge - 2W, E5 (W1 of 2) #130 Things With Wings + A Sentiment
• Crafting with an Attitude - M, 1stThurs, E3 - Freestyle/Fantasy
• Sassy Studio Designs - W, SIO: #278 Come Fly With Me (include wings)
• Wonderful Wednesdays -  W, SIO -  Always Anything Goes
• All Crafts Challenge - 2M, 1st Monday of the month every other month, NO CARDS - (Apr/May) Anything But a Card
• Craft Your Passion - W, E3 - Always Anything Goes
• Not Just Cards - 2W - (Week 2) Always Anything Goes

Thank you for stopping by today and hope you have a happy crafting time ahead of you :) xx