It's Technique Tuesday

Yay! It's Technique Tuesday!

As you know, yesterday we celebrated our first Birthday, whoo hoo! I hope you were all able to stop by and celebrate with us, and pick up the freebie image and sentiments!

Today, we have a fun tutorial for you! We are going to work with shrink plastic!

This particular tutorial, we are going to make charms or similar sized goodies, but there are so many fabulous other possibilities!

This fun tutorial is guaranteed to bring out the kid in you!

And, to make it more fun, we will be working with yesterday's freebie image, 1st Birthday. (If you missed out on the freebie image you can still get it today until 6 p.m.  After that it will be available at the store.)

Okay, now, let the fun begin:

First let's assemble our supplies!


Basic Supplies you will need:

Image or Images of your choice
Sheet of Shrink plastic
Promarkers, Copics or other alcohol based coloring materials
Heat Gun

Optional supplies:

Hole punch
Earring Wires, Pin backs, Slip rings, etc. (Depending on what you are making)


Now that we have assembled supplies, let's have some fun!


The first thing you will need to do is to use your printer, and print your digi image onto shrink plastic. You may need to experiment a little to determine what size to print your images. (Remember, you need to allow for shrinkage. The amount of shrinkage will vary, depending on the brand of shrink plastic you use, so you may want to print out a few extra for practice.)

Next, color your image with your markers. (I used Promarkers). Then, cut out your image. I chose to leave a little bit of a border around my image, when cutting out.

Here, you can see a pic of my two images, colored and cut out, before shrinking:



Next, If you are making earrings, or a charm, you will need to punch a hole into your plastic image. (I used the Crop A Dile Big Bite, on the standard size, and it is the perfect sized hole, for an earring.)

Now, we are ready to shrink!

Don't hold the heat gun too close to the image.

Be very careful when shrinking! The plastic gets very hot! You don't want to burn yourself! I used a pair of Tweezerbees to hold my image in place as it was shrinking.

As the plastic shrinks, it will start to curl up and you'll think, Oh no, what a mess! LOL But, believe me, it straightens out. (Some brands are easier to work with than others, trust me!)

I used a clear acrylic block from my clear stamps, to lay on top of the image and help flatten it out, in the final stage of shrinking, and after it was fully shrunk. This helps flatten out your project.

Once finished shrinking, let cool for a minute, then add your earring wires, pin back, etc, depending on what you are making.

I used the earring wires with the tiny ring attached, so I just needed to open the ring and slide it through the hole in the plastic, and close the ring.

Ta-Da!

Now you have this cute pair of earrings!





By the way, these are the perfect accessory for the birthday crown I did, for yesterday's project! (Shhhh... I am thinking about sending these earrings and the crown from yesterday to Shelly and make her wear it all day and take a pic for us! I'm asking people to stop by my blog and post a comment on the crown post, if they want me to send these to Shelly to wear! If I get 20 comments or more, asking me to mail Shelly these goodies to wear, I will send them off to her and she will have to wear them for the world to see! Help me get the comments I need so Shelly can wear her crown and earrings! Stop by and leave a comment on my blog!)


Thanks for stopping by today!

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial!

Stop by again, Thursday, for a fun new challenge!