2016 #16 Charming Shrink Plastic and Clay {by Lucy Edmondson}

 2016 Topic 16: Beads,Charms and Dangles

Hi everyone, Lucy from Lucy's True Colours here.

Tonight I'd like to share with you a post about making clay and shrink plastic charms to decorate a box, together with a background technique using Crayola Slick Stix.

I love using stamps to make my own charms, and both shrink plastic and clay have always appealed to me: shrink plastic because of the way it miniaturizes everything whilst retaining the detail, and clay because I love the solidity of the finished piece. I have kept them black and white on this occasion, along with the box itself, and offset them against brightly coloured fun crayon backgrounds.

Step 1: Charms

To make the crown charms I used the two crowns from Lynne Perrella LPC 003

and LPC 007 

I rolled the oven bake Sculpey out to a quarter inch thickness and then inked the stamps with Versafine in Onyx Black, pressing in well. I then cut then out with a craft knife. The oven baking will heat set the ink. You can use a sanding block around the edges after.

Step 2: Shrink Plastic
Next I used the same crowns and the pen from Lynne Perrella LPC 030 to make the shrink plastic charms, this time using Jet Black StazOn and white shrink plastic. 

Here's a tip, don't do as I did here. I tend to be a bit stingy with my supplies and as the stamps are so small I thought I would use up my scraps. It's not a good idea to do this, particularly if you want several identical items, as you can get some distortion. If I understand it correctly, shrink plastic is manufactured by heating and stretching pieces of plastic in one direction, so if you use your scraps you are likely to change the orientation of the piece so it will shrink in a different direction and might be slightly wider or longer than the item next to it. So it is advisable to use a whole sheet of shrink plastic and work across and down it in rows. 

Anyhow, cut the pieces out with a slight border around them, and shrink with your heat tool and flatten with a mounting block. 

Step 3: Slick Stix
Next I had a bit of fun with Crayola Slick Stix, which are new to me. They are twistable water soluble crayons, very similar to gelatos and distress crayons, but cheaper. They don't come in as many colours but they blend well to create additional colours. I painted my pieces of card with gesso and for my project I wanted two separate colour ways. For my first, I used yellow, orange, blue, and green. I applied them one colour at a time as shown, blending them with my finger as far as they would go before adding the next colour beside it, blending that into it and away from it as far as it would go.

Step 4: Water
To blend and dilute further, I spritzed the card quite generously with water and waited a few moments for some bleached spots to appear for extra interest. I then used a flat paintbrush to go evenly back and forth from left to right with absorbent paper underneath to pick up any colour coming away. As you can see, the top half is much more blended than the bottom. The blue crayon has created an additional shade of green. Spritz again if you want more water spots or more dilution but heat set before stamping. 

Step 5: And repeat
Repeat the process with the two shades of Blue, Purple, and Red crayons.  Stamp a selection of Lynne Perrella images onto a mixture of the two colours of cardstock, clear embossing with Versafine in Onyx black.

Step 6: Box Backgrounds
As you can see here, I used stamps from Lynne Perrella Eclectica LPC003 LPC014  LPC030 LPC034. I added some white highlights with gesso and some extra colour with Fibralo pens on the final pieces. I cut the pieces to fit the box compartments and it took me a loooooong time deciding on placement! In addition to the stamped pieces shown, as you can see in the final pictures I decided to use the text stamp from LPC 014  as the best way to show off the charms. 

Step 7: Box Front
Now for the box itself. I sanded and gessoed it, and then painted it with Fresco Snowflake. Then, holding my breath, I carefully clear embossed the pen from Lynne Perrella  onto all four sides of the front of the box with Versafine Onyx Black. You need to be tentative with the heat gun because of the clear film in the frame. I neatened around the edges of the front of the aperture by gluing a line of tiny black accent beads. I lined the inside compartments with spare pieces of the prepared cardstock in the relevant colours and adhered the stamped pieces in place. Finally, I glued the shrink plastic and clay charms into position.

In this final close up photo, you can see where I have used a little gesso on the faces etc, and some Fibralo pens.

I had such fun playing around with the crayon backgrounds for this project and I love how the black and white has worked against the bright colours! The charms were easy, but it was such a fiddly project to decide which stamped images looked best where. It looks so simple now it is finished! I hope you will have a go making your own stamped charms in shrink plastic and clay, perhaps experimenting with some different colours.

Lucy Blog: Lucy's True Colours Twitter @CraftyLuce

Lucy I love your gorgeous frame with the clever, very beautiful niches decorated so perfectly! All the little charms sit so well in thier individual frames! This project is adorable! ~Leandra

We would love to see how you interpret this Beads,Charms and Dangles topic by linking what you make to our 2016 Challenge #16 HERE.

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All links go in the draw to win a £50 voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. The Beads,Charms and Dangles link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, Sept 4th 2016. The winner will be announced 2  hours later at 19:00.