Arty Shrink Plastic???

Can Shrink Plastic (Shrinky Dinks) be arty? Or is it merely an old-fashioned stamping product that has had it's day? Nay I Say!!!!! Shrink Plastic CAN be arty and I intend to prove this to the girls in my atc class next Saturday when we tackle the still "oooooohhhhh and aaaaaaaahhhhh" inspiring humble plastic. Yep, grown women are still just as amazed as kids, when they watch their stamped piece shrivel and shrink and curl up on itself, only to flatten out miraculously and reveal a fantastic little rendition of the larger former item.

A little experiment I tried was running some white shrink plastic through my printer (Epson with Durabrite inks). It printed out okay...if a little blurry in spots because I didn't bother to sand the shrink plastic first (like you should if you are applying colour). Just thought I'd "wing it"! You need to be really careful not to touch the colour as it doesn't dry until it's heated so cut out carefully!!! Go on...ask me how I know!!! lol One thing though, you really need to have a PALE image because as you know, the colour really intensifies as it shrinks down. Enough blabber.....on with the samples...

This one, "Relique", is one of the inkjet printer ones. It's Michelangelo's pointing hands that are the printed image and the little bits of embossing powder in the top right & left hand corner cover a smudgy finger-print from touching the print while still wet. Aren't you glad I ALWAYS tell you my mistakes! ;-)

The next atc is a stamped image that has been coloured with.....********.....no, not a typo....I can't tell you because it's a surprise for the Saturday atc girls. All will be revealed after Saturday's class. I'm doing this because I KNOW they read my blog and I can't give all my surprises away before the class. Some of them have been known to practice before the class! hahahaha The background is canvas paper that has been coloured with twinkling H2O's, very subtle colouring, and stamped with Stazon Timber Brown and a script stamp. Plus the ubiquitous German Scrap available from here. This one is "Francia".

Next up is another stamped image. It's the absolutely fabulous famous face of Lina Cavalieri, she's used on many, many stamps because quite frankly, she is just gorgeous! The two images were stamped on almond coloured shrink plastic that I sanded first, then I added colour with the glimmer chalks, (also available at Scraptivate) then stamped two sections of the stamp in black Stazon. The size of the shrink plastic before it was shrunk was the same size as an atc - 2-1/2" x 3-1/2", so this gives you some idea of how much shrinkage there really is! ERROR ALERT!!! ERROR ALERT!!! The "E" is backwards because I made a mistake...but kinda liked the look of it anyway so I did it again on the "HATE". No mistake is a mistake if you do it twice....right??? This one is called "Love/Hate"...sort of like all kinds of relationships...no?

I still have another couple of shrink plastic atc's but they will have to wait until my next post, I need to photograph them and one is at work. Will take my camera tomorrow to work and put them up soon.

Timbo & Miss Prawn shake their groove thang!!!

Check out the gender confusion for my good pal Miss Prawn and you all know who the other dude is!!!

How Dare You Fibre Challenge & raffle atc

Hmmmm...."fibre" was the challenge for our group on the How Dare You blog this month. You may not be aware but I'm about all fibred-out, after years of sewing costumes for dance schools and ice & roller skaters, my sewing machine doesn't see much action at all these days! So I'm sort of cheating a bit and using a past piece to satisfy the parameters of this particular challenge.



I also spent 6 years making cloth dolls, not Raggedy Ann types, more soft sculptural pieces than play pieces and took part in many wonderful workshops with both talented Aussie teachers as well as overseas teachers. Annie Hesse being one of them (US)! So below are a couple of pictures of my most "fibre-licious" piece of work in my whole 6 years of doll making. It stands 3 feet tall, took around 3 days to make, has 10 balls of wool in the skirt, the beaded face took 8 hours alone to do (it's 3 inches across). Annie Hesse was also the pattern designer for the other 3ft tall Ancestor dolls that were in a previous post here. Apologies for the shocking pics, these were done on a dodgy camera before I got my new digital.

EDIT: Whoops, just realised I'm in Group 2 on Aussie Dares (How Dare You Blog) so didn't need to post to this fibre challenge....oh well....3 cheers for a dufus moment!!! lol

Here's the raffle atc for today's Microscope Slide atc class at Scraptivate that I'm doing. Though I may change my mind and either do another one, or, give one of the other previous ones away as I sort of like this one. ;--) Good ol' German Scrap embosses just beautifully, this fabulous colour is Judikins Rustiques Weathered Iron.

chunky pages - Gothic & Forensics

Woo-hoo!!! I finally have something to add to Michelle Ward's Crusade....it WOULD be Crusade Number 13 too.....how....appropriate!!! lol
Here's the link to the awesome Michelle's Crusade blog (and you just KNOW how much I love her stamps by how often I use them!) HCIT!!! (Michelle-speak - how cool is that!)

It's Saturday afternoon and I've completed my set of Gothic chunky pages for our Altered Book Club.....finally! Now just need to get started on Art Deco, then next up we have Gods/Goddesses and then Chairs. Yep, chairs! Definitely going to have to keep my eye out for something strange to do with chairs....how boring to just have a picture of a dining chair or a lounge chair. So here is Gothic (front),

I've been listening to HIM's new cd, Venus Doom, there's a track on it called "Something Diabolical", hence the name of this chunky page...thought it kinda suited the image. Excellent cd by the way! I stamped the word onto shrink plastic and added it with jump rings for a more 3-d effect. I also used my new white webbing spray that we just got in at the shop, I already had black and gold and love it! It's a little hard to see the webbing spray in the scan as I'd sprayed the black cardstock first with Starburst Stain in Long John Silver (I LOVE those names!) and then the white webbing spray, certainly better irl (as usual).

Here's the back, quite plain but it just ties it in with the theme so it's not too boring when you flip the page to check out the next person's awesome piece of art!

I hadn't posted the images of the Forensics chunky swap from last month either so here's the front of that one...don't you just love the "dead man" stencil!!!

The back. The "Evidence" word is one of the 7 gypsies fabric gaffer tape that has all sorts of cool words on them, this roll particularly suited this theme. The image of Lucky Luciano is from here, a cool mobster generator.

Back to the studio...

Microscope slide atc's & Newcastle

...and a wonderful time was had by all during our visit to Newcastle to catch up with "the boy" (okay...at 22 he's a man but he's still a boy to me. Mothers....can you relate? lol)

I had a glorious time at my mini workshop day with some fabulous girls that I've only spoken to on-line through one of the yahoo groups I belong to.....waves & smiles to you Julian, Louisa, Martina, Niki, Elise and the wonderful hostess - Christine. Sorry we missed you Ruth ;-(
I hope the techniques that you learnt will add to the extraordinary repertoire of fabulous things you can do with atc's. Oh and the view from Christine's house over Lake Macquarie was just spectacular!!!


Now onto some pics....my next atc class that I'm teaching at Scraptivate in a week's time is about incorporating microscope slides in atc's. They really look best if they are edged (the slides I'm talking about) in some way...either with the metal tape that is available in brass, silver or copper, or even with humble double-sided tape which is then embossed with embossing powder. A great look either way!

First one below is edged with the silver tape...take note of the extra bits of embossed tape that I've placed across a couple of places on the slide. Word to the wise - if you burnish the foil tape too hard, you'll crack the glass...but in the vein of "no such thing as a mistake", just cover the crack with skinny double-stick tape (available here), pour on some embossing powder and heat...voila! All fixed!
Drat....now I've just proven that yes, the teacher DOES make mistakes (more than you realise!!! lol).

Next up I have used the double-stick tape around the edge of the microscope slide and then coated it with verdigris embossing powder...lovely colour!

Lastly, this one is also edged with the silver tape but to make it blend a little better with the gorgeous "smoosh" technique background (Ranger distress pads in weathered wood & peeled paint) as well as Michelle Ward's ever-beautiful clear "Bird Sanctuary" stamps, I've coloured the silver tape with pitch black alcohol ink and coloured the square glass slide with some alcohol ink in oregano and a little pitch black. (I think I've broken some grammatical law with the length of that last sentence.....so shoot me!) The chicken wire fence image is stamped onto the glass slide while the other images are underneath, of course any stamping onto the glass slides must be done with Stazon.

Now what I need to work on are some chunky pages for our ABC (Altered Book Club) group, I'm a little behind in that....gothic and art deco must be completed before the next meeting in November!!! Promise girls!