Butterfly punch and Candle stamping!

Well I've had a wonderful crafty day so far!
This morning I went around to the fabulous Kirsty Wisemans for a spot of card making. I won an amazing competition on her blog a few weeks ago (36 Promarkers and Aqua Markers!) and then realised we only live around the corner from each other.
Kirsty was extremely generous, and gave me free reign in her craft room to use whatever I wanted!(drool!)
As she had just come back from representing Tonic punches at Stiches we had a play around with some butterfly punches, something I would never normally use.

I created this lovely card, and after creating one, I decided to stick with a winning formula and made 2 very similar ones for my twin friends whose birthdays are tomorrow!

I made them the mirror image of each other, just to make them a little different!

When I came home from Kirstys I was in full on craft mode, and decided to try something I've been looking into for a few weeks, candle stamping. The basic idea is to transfer an image stamped onto tissue to a candle. You actually embed the tissue into the candle, its not an actual transfer. I wasn't confident to try it on a fresh candle, so picked a used one from our bathroom to test the technique!

I stamped a flourish onto some bog standard (no pun intended!) toilet paper. I realised quite quickly that this was an error, as cutting tissue is HARD! So I decided to go for a simpler design, a nice leaf. I used memento ink first, then distress ink. Both worked. You cut the image out, then peel away the back layer of tissue leaving the very thin layer with the image.

You need some wax/greaseproof paper to hold the image into the candle and keep it pressed against the wax as it melts.
You use a heat embossing gun to melt the wax, and its very much like embossing, because you can actually see the wax melt and the tissue embedding. Keep the wax paper really tight and when its melted slightly stop heating and roll the candle (still wrapped in wax paper) on a flat surface to set it.
It dries really quickly, and then you peel back the paper to reveal the image!

I decided to try something a little harder and went for some text. I tried some basic and some fancy texts.

Both worked really well, and I was suprised that you can't see the tissue at all. I'm planning to give this another go very soon as a gift for a friend, so pop back and see what I come up with!