Pinterest Craft Day #8

This afternoon five ladies met around my dining room table to make sheet music candles. We thought this was a really fun idea on Pinterest.

A few days ago I raided our decorations closet at church for a dozen or so white and cream pillar candles that have seen better days. I already knew fresh candles were in the new budget, so I felt confident that walking off with the old, wonky ones wouldn't hurt anyone's feelings. But just to be sure, I passed it by our Worship Leader; he gave me the thumbs up. I also found, deep in a dusty closet, an old, outdated hymnal from two decades ago. We no longer use this edition, so I knew nobody would miss it either. 

At my dining table today, we first tore pages from the hymnal. We ripped the pages down to the size to fit the height of the candle, and then we tightly wrapped a page around the candle and pinned in place. 

Using a heat gun (best) or blow dryer (ok), we heated the candle until the wax started to melt and bleed through the paper, working all the way around the candle. That bonded the paper to the candle. We found it best to immediately roll any paper edges on the table to fully bond. Those edges like to pop up. 

After making some candles with music we decided to branch out and try different papers. We already knew that scrapbooking papers would be too thick, so we tried another Pinterest technique: color copy onto a piece of tissue paper or tracing paper. How did we do that? First cut the thin paper longer than a standard piece of copy paper, and barely narrower than the copy paper. For example, cut the tissue or tracing paper about 8" wide, and 13" or 14" long. Stack the thin paper with the copy paper, then wrap the excess of the thin paper to the back of the copy paper and tape it in place. Run it through the copier as usual. (Make sure you select "color"!) Untape it and there you have thin,  pretty paper to melt to your candle. And that's it!

The wax may run down the candle; that's fine. You can roll the candle on your work surface whenever you want. The drips will embed into the candle and the edges will adhere better. See the pushpins on the candle? They hold the paper in place until it's well melted.
 

 A fave rose print scrapbook paper turned into candle decor.

 Another favorite paper decorates a candle.

 

 We especially like the music candles clustered together for impact.