Anniversary - The Idea Room

Personalized Embossed Candles

**Don’t forget to enter the glass tile pendant giveaway…it ends tonight!!

Make some super easy personalized embossed candles. These are perfect for a personalized gift for Christmas (which is what I made them for a few months ago), or a wedding/anniversary gift or for your girl friend who loves taking a bath by candle light.

All you need is a fresh, new candle (older ones do not melt as smoothly), a stamp, stamp pad (in your color choice), vinyl letters or scrapbook letters, tissue paper the same color as your candle and an embossing tool. I borrowed my friends embossing tool, but they can be found at any major craft supply store.

I tried embossing colored candles and found that they were much more difficult to get a clean professional look because the dye tended to bleed and discolor the candle. So I prefer to use white or cream colored candles.

**I have wondered if a really hot hair dryer will work instead of an embossing tool, but I have not tried it. You could always experiment on a candle you don’t care about ruining and see if it works well enough to give a nice smooth finished look so that you don’t have to get an embossing tool.

Then take your letters or picture stamp design and stamp them onto your tissue paper.

After the ink has completely dried (to prevent smearing), cut around as close as possible to the edges of your lettering or picture.

Place your tissue paper on the candle exactly where you want it to be. I wet my finger and touched it to the tissue paper in a couple of spots and stuck it onto the candle. Then carefully and evenly move embossing tool over the tissue paper. This will melt the candle wax which will then cause the tissue paper to stick to the candle. If you are careful enough this will create a seamless seal and the tissue paper will melt into the candle and appear as if the lettering is directly on the candle.

**I would practice on a practice candle several times before doing the final run on your gift candle. This takes a bit of practice so as not to melt your candle too much in different areas.

As soon as you get a hang of it, it is really simple. I made some also with scrapbook letters which can be seen on the left candle in the picture above.

If you don’t have any one who needs a candle for a gift, make one to enhance your own holiday decorations.

Go on and give it a try! And remember, I love seeing pictures of any and all of your finished projects.

June 24, 2009 · Filed under: Anniversary, Christmas, Crafts, Gifts, Wedding Gifts Tagged with

Etched Glass Projects

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I made an etched glass vase for a friend’s wedding recently (and of course one for me) after seeing this idea from Martha Stewart. I eventually want to label some canisters by etching the glass and am on the lookout for some inexpensive glass jars.

You can etch anything that is glass with this Armor Etch cream and it is so easy to use. You will need the following:

1. Armor Etch (found at craft stores); I bought mine with a 40% off coupon (of course) at Roberts since it is fairly expensive (about $7 full price).
2. Contact Paper (housewares department at Wal-Mart aka shelf liner or Laminating Sheets
3. Exact-o knife (razor blade)
4. tape
5. template or stencil (I printed a letter from my word program as my template)
6. paint brush

First start by making sure your glass surface is clean. Then cut out a piece of contact paper that is bigger than your stencil. You will want the contact paper to cover quite a bit of your glass surface to protect the glass from coming in contact with the cream where you don’t want it. Carefully peel the backing off of the contact paper and stick it onto the glass. Do this very carefully so that there are no bubbles or creases in the contact paper. You may need to rub some of the smaller bubbles out with your fingers.

Now that the contact paper is on your glass, take your stencil and center it. Tape it down to keep it in place. Take your Exact-o knife and carefully cut out your stencil. You will have to push harder to make sure it cuts through the paper layer and the contact paper.

Remove the contact paper where you want your glass to be etched (in this case it was the letter H).

Paint the etch cream over the glass you would like etched (the letter H). I followed the directions on the bottle the first time but had to redo it to get the effect I wanted. So if you want your etching to turn out like mine did, I left the cream on for about 10 minutes.

I have also found that you can reuse the etching cream, so when the time is up, I scrape it back into the bottle. I then reapplied some more etching cream and left it on for another 5 minutes.

When you are finished with the second application, save the excess cream. Then leaving the contact paper on your vase, rinse off the cream with water. You will want to be careful where you rinse your cream off. The package cautions you from using porcelain sinks since the cream may damage the surface. I rinsed mine off outside in the hose over the grass. Now that it is clean, peel away the contact paper.

I also etched one of my Pyrex 9×13 pans so that when I take dinner to my neighbors or other families in my church group, they know who the pan belongs to. These would be great gifts to give someone, don’t you think? To be able to read the name while looking into the pan, you need to tape the name onto the bottom of the pan so that it reads backwards. After it is taped, turn the pan right side up and see if you have taped it on so you can read the name correctly.

I think the next thing I will be etching is one of the glass tile pendants, or my pumpkin pie dish for next Thanksgiving. The possibilities are endless.

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June 1, 2009 · Filed under: Anniversary, Crafts, Gifts, Mother's Day, Wedding Gifts Tagged with

Peppermint Foot Scrub Recipe

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Make your own Peppermint Foot Scrub in a few simple steps with simple and easy to find ingredients…

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Remember the brown sugar scrub recipe I shared awhile back? How about making some yummy smelling, skin softening, Peppermint Foot Scrub? Perfect for the mother-to-be or the soccer mom who is constantly on the go. This stuff is amazing. The best part is how shockingly simple it is to make.

Take 1 cup granulated sugar and pour into a mixing bowl. Gradually add your favorite Olive Oil or Coconut Oil and mix together until you have a slightly wet, but grainy consistency (really, whatever looks good to you).

Add a few drops of Peppermint Essential Oil. Transfer the scrub to a cute bottle and Viola! Peppermint Foot Scrub.

You could really make this recipe with any flavor of essential oil you would like. Wouldn’t these make a nice gift for someone?

**I originally pictured this scrub being a nice, fresh, white color, but my Olive Oil had a really yellowish tint which tainted the color of the sugar. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions about an oil that is more clear in color? I ended up adding 1 drop of red food coloring to mask the yellow color. But I love the idea of eventually making this all natural without any dyes, etc.
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