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As you can see below trick photography is not
really my forte. I saw something similar in a
book I borrowed from my local library and
although it did not explain how to do it I
decided to give it a go...

Nice idea! A couple of suggestions if I may:

Try giving the candle a colour closer to the skin, so as the viewer's attention moves along the finger it takes them longer to realise it's become a candle.

Your JPEG file is in Adobe RGB (1998): you should convert the copy of your image to sRGB IEC61966-2.1 before saving as a JPEG for the web, to give it the best change of getting reasonable colours on most viewers' screens.

Because of the automatic resizing that happens here, I try to keep my images to a maximum of 760px to avoid it: it keeps the final result much sharper.

"Eureka!"

Cheers

Thanks Dave. I'll work on your advice.
I made some changes with my limited PS knowledge. The changes:

I would also try a slightly tighter crop as all of the black on the right is not adding anything to the pic.

Thanks Big V.

Nice concept. Remember, if you are an ass scratcher - DON’T

Nicely done!

How about doing another version with a white background, silhoutted finger and yellow flame which illuminates just the top of the finger?

Whilst probably getting far away from your original image, I think a larger flame would make it look even better.