January Stamp Club 1/8/11 and 1/10/11

The first card for January Stamp Club was a slider card - which proved to be a challenge.   I've got to play with it some more.  I had adjusted it some and moved the slider pieces out so the caterpillar could be longer.  I had made the slider pieces about 1/4" longer than the tutorial indicated, but no where in the info I was looking at did it say move the pieces out - that I experimented with on my own.  The second batch of Saturday's class we just left the slider pieces where the tutorial from http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/ indicated they should be.    The challenge after my adjustment was that the slider pieces didn't always want to go in and out like we wanted them to.  When we went back to the original instructions they seemed to do a little better.   Methinks I need to play with this card a little more if I want longer slider pieces -- maybe make them 5" instead of 4 1/4" long. 

Here is the card.   I thought it was really cute and just the thing to demostrate this type of card with Valentine's Day coming up.

Slider card closed.

Slider card open.

CASED from:  I believe the card I cased this from was created by lpratt.   Will come back and edit with more info and link when I find my papers.

Original tutorial for slider card on splitcoaststampers by Beate Johns.

Cardstock Stampin' Up! Whisper White base, More Mustard face with 1 3/8" circle punch, body 1" circles:  More Mustard, Pumpkin Pie, Real Red, Old Olive Pacific Point, Perfect Plum

Lettering is done with the Big Shot and the Billboard Alphabet decorative strip die.

The slider card had a lot of steps, so we only did one other card.

CASED from:   Was not able to find from whom I CASED this card.   I looked on splitcoast under the name of the stamp set and the date back in 2007 but was not able to find anything.  

Stamp Set:  Loads of Love for hearts; Teeny Tiny Wishes for sentiment

Cardstock:  Whisper White, Pretty in Pink, Real Red

Tag Punch and Small Tag Punch

Inside of card - not CASED

Stamp Set:  Blowing Kisses stamped in Real Red ink

FROM THE PAST was stamping on candles or better worded - adhering a stamped image on a candle. 

Tutorial is on splitcoaststampers - by Beate Johns.

Uh oh -- "love" is backwards!

Stamp Set is I {Heart} Hearts - stamped in Cherry Cobbler.

Note the heart on the left with the word love ... Erin noticed this -- we learn from my mistakes again!  : )

My mistake was in having the tissue paper turned over on the wrong side when I laid it against the candle -- so if you have words you're putting on a candle -- look at which side of the paper is against the candle and make sure the correct side is facing up towards you!

On Saturday we put these hearts on the taller 5 1/2" candle - it looks good on the taller one too!

I also made a sample candle using the I {Love} Love jumbo wheel and Real Red classic ink.

This was wheeled on a longer piece of  white tissue (the kind of tissue paper you use with gift bags).  Tissue paper and candle need to be white as the tissue melts into the candle.  It wouldn't look right being melted into say, a navy candle.

The two pictures show the two sides of the candle since we had a long image on a long piece of tissue paper which we cut at an appropriate place when the two ends of the tissue paper met in the back. 

We did learn, especially with this candle, that the tissue paper needs to be cut very close to the image - between 1/8" and 1/4" of an inch - closer to the 1/8".   We had some with a 1/2" unstamped border on the top and the bottom, and the edges did not melt into the candle very well, even when we went back and tried to concentrate on those areas. 

You lay the tissue paper on the candle and then wrap a piece of wax paper around the candle so that you can grip the ends of the wax paper - which also holds the tissue paper against the candle.   As indicated above - see the tutorial and video at splitcoaststampers.   

Putting the image on the candles really wasn't hard and didn't take long at all.  The other thing I learned, though, was work over a table protected with an old tablecloth.   The first candle I did I realized it was melting and dripping on the floor.  You probably don't need to get it that hot (don't need to get to the dripping point) -- you can kinda see the wax paper melting -- the stamped image gets darker and the wax paper shiny.

I had made candles a couple of years ago - but I printed a picture of Candi and Mark on a piece of tissue paper (ask me how - too long to explain here) and a picture of Trey and Inga on another and then melted those into the candle just like the stamped images above.  If I find a picture of those, I'll put on a later blog.