Fairy Tales/tails...

Hey, hi!

I'm back today with something a little different!  Fun, but....different.  This project is also today's post at Jane's Doodles blog.

So, remember Shrinky Dinks?  I haven't played with shrink plastic in years, but recently I was challenged to make an exchange item for a crafting club I belong to.  Our theme for that month was Fairy Tales.  I racked my brain long and hard and then remembered my Jane's Doodles stamp set called Magical!  It has all the elements of a fairy tale and so!  I decided to make charms from these stamped images and shrink plastic for beaded string bookmarks!  Genius, right??

I had to do some experimenting.  (Like I said, it's been awhile.) I stamped and colored on clear plastic, sanded clear plastic and white shrink plastic and finally decided that I like the white best.  It allowed me to make a charm with a white edge by cutting a border around the stamped and colored image.  I also felt that the colors translated more accurately on the white shrink plastic.

Alcohol markers are the name of the game with this craft.  I used mostly Sharpies, but found that along with the image shrinking in the oven, the colors also darkened and intensified, so I pulled out some paler colors from my Copics and tried those.  Something I didn't know to do until I was finished was to lightly sand the surface of the shrink plastic so that the marker color goes on more smoothly and doesn't streak or puddle.  I'll definitely be doing that next time!

So I cut around the stamped and colored images, baked them in the oven as per the package directions (preheated oven at 350 degrees) for approximately 3 minutes.  That's how long it takes for them to give you a heart attack by twisting and curling all up on themselves, convincing you that the whole idea was an epic fail, and then relax and fall back nice and flat on the teflon heat mat.  Yeah, about 3 minutes.  It was a bit of an emotional roller coaster!

Then it got really fun!  And also necessitated a trip to the craft store for more beads.  But that's never a bad thing!  Especially the week that beads are the door busters for the store!  60%-70% off!  I probably bought way more than I'll ever use, but never mind about that.

Dragons, castles and princesses!  All the required things for a good fairy tale!  And now my friends all have a little beaded fairy tail to mark the spot in their books!

Thanks for stopping by today and have a wonderful day!