Class Photos and a Shrink Plastic Jewellery Tutorial.

Hop on over to the Flickr site to see the cards we made at class tonight.  Bonus was that we found the stamp that we lost at last Technique Class. It was sitting on a low shelf where it had fallen and remained hidden.  Those pesky acrylic stamps are great until you drop them and they become invisible!

I found this tutorial when blog hopping one evening and saved it to share with you.  Jane from Milliemarvels Blog comes from a town in England close to where I originally came from.
This is a great craft to use some of those lovely stamps you own on.  We sell Shrink Plastic in the store and although Jane tells you here about using your heat gun, if you don't own one then you can use your oven instead.  It's great fun to see the change as the plastic shrinks.  Don't limit yourself in thinking it only works for jewellery, you can make some lovely charms for your scrapbook pages or cards too.

Mini Santa Shrink Plastic Earrings tutorial

  Materials needed:  Whiff of Joy Mini Stamp - Quiet Santa  

NOTE: You can use stamp of your choice here

White Shrink Plastic
Stazon or other alcohol based ink       

Colouring medium (Promarkers (Copics), Sakura pen)
Hole punch or cropodile           

Jewellry findings: jump rings, earring hooks, eyepins
Round nose pliers and wire cutters     Small pearls

Instructions:Stamp and colour the image on the rough side of the shrink plastic. The colours will intensify when the image is shrunk so take this into account when colouring in. I added Sakura glitter pen to the fur on Santa's hat and coat. If using Promarkers (Copics) try not to colour over the stamped lines or the ink will run.

Cut the image out and punch a hole          Shrink the image using a heat gun.   

in the top of Santa's hat.                        Use scissors or tweezers to hold the image

                                                                              to stop it blowing away       

     When completely shrunk, flatten with  acrylic block

 Use the pliers to open up a jump ring. Attach an eyepin to the jump ring and thread and fix to the top of Santa on two beads. Cut  pin and bend with the round nose pliers to form a loop. 

    

  Finish the earrings by attaching another jump ring and the

earring hooks.

I will definitely be making more of these before Christmas comes along. They are surprisingly quick to make and it would also be really easy to make phone charms or small badges using this technique.
I hope you will be inspired to give this a try.

Jane

Hope you enjoy this tutorial........Lilian