2024 Topic 1: Miniature {by Renata Peley} on the PaperArtsy Blog

Hi everyone! It is Peley Renata here with you today and the first thing that I must say is that the topic “miniature” is really something that draws my attention. I always enjoyed tiny things and admired the artists who have that amazing hand control and can work within small formats. Sadly, I find my skill somewhat lacking, but that is not the only problem. The bigger issue for me is the shortage of patience that I generally suffer from. But I found a little workaround for my issue. What if I work within the usual size that I am comfortable with and then shrink my project? I bet a lot of you already know where I am going with this.

If you thought of shrink plastic, you guessed well. A couple of years ago I decided to give it a try as I thought: how hard could it be? But apparently it was a bit trickier than I thought as my first attempt wasn’t all that great. So now with this PaperArtsy topic, I decided to give the shrink film another chance, but this time I would approach the whole project with a little bit more care. So let me share with you what I learned so you can avoid some common mistakes and annoyances.

Ok, so the obvious necessary product for this project is the shrink film. Some of you might be more familiar with the name Shrinky Dink, but regardless of how you call it, it is a type of thermoplastic called polystyrene. It can be purchased as colored, white, clear, printed, frosted and sanded. For my project, I managed to acquire three types: clear, sanded and white. I will use all three just for the purpose of demonstration and testing, but honestly the differences weren’t all that big.

You can print on your shrink plastic, but then be sure to use only inkjet printer. I decided to go a bit more manual and do some stamping instead. All the stamps that I have chosen to work with are from PaperArtsy and designed by Elena Zinski (ZinskiArt). Here is the list of all the stamps that I have used: ZA37, ZN49, ZN51, ZN25, ZN07, ZN11 and ZN40.

When you look at my choice of the stamps, you can notice that I went for more quirky and cheerful designs as I thought to involve my kids in the making of this project. And honestly, I do recommend that you do this type of project with your kids or grandkids as I can tell you that my kids were overjoyed to make little charms colored with their own little hands.

Let’s start with the obvious: the ink pad. The best type of inks to use are pigment inks and permanent inks such as Stazon, however, be aware that not all inks perform the same on all brands of shrink plastic. Some of the problems that may occur are the ink not setting in, even after shrinking, ink smudging or sliding over the surface of the shrink film. In this case, I will be using Stazon ink in Jet Black color. But first, let me give you one extra tip. Depending on the medium that you planned to use for coloring, it can be really helpful to sand your shrink film before you start working on it. This step is not necessary if you buy sanded or frosted shrink plastic. The sandpaper that you use should be neither too fine nor too rough. Also be sure to go in all directions when sanding. This will help with both the ink not sliding and getting more crisp image, but also with certain coloring mediums, but I will mention that in a minute. First, I would like to show you on the following image how my clear shrink film looks when one half of it has been sanded while the other one hasn’t.

There is one more recommended step before you proceed with stamping or coloring and it is to clean your shrink film using rubbing alcohol, to remove any oils and dirt. Once the surface is dry, start stamping! And as you can see, I stamped a lot of images on all three types of shrink plastic (pre-sanded one, the clear one that I sanded and the white).

 

Of course, stamping or printing isn’t the only option that you have. You can also draw and make your own designs of charms. I mostly used stamps, but I did draw a couple of hearts and stars. If you wonder what I used for drawing - those are the same mediums that you can use for coloring. But let me elaborate on that.

First, I would like to mention mediums that are not giving the best results when working on shrink film, such as crayons, water and oil-based markers and tempera. A little disclaimer here – I have not tested any of these, and this info is based on the research that I did previous to attempting this project.

The mediums that I did test are Posca markers, alcohol markers (Spectrum Noir), soft pastels (Sennelier) and Prismacolor colored pencils. Keep in mind that regardless of which color or medium you choose, the color will intensify once shrank. Also, while working with Posca’s or alcohol markers doesn’t require sanding the plastic film, if you want to work with soft pastels or colored pencils, sanding is a must. Still, I must say my favorite was coloring with colored pencils. Why? Because most of the stamps that I chose have tiny details, so coloring with pencils is easy in this case, also because once shrank, the image is opaque enough, the strokes of coloring can’t be seen and besides, I simply enjoy coloring with pencils the most. On the image below, you can see how the houses look on the shrink plastic, colored with pencils before the shrinking.

For a comparison, I will show you an image where I used four different mediums. The houses were colored with Prismacolor pencils, the bat-cat with alcohol markers, the chef chicken with soft pastels and the crazy looking rabbit with posca markers.

And yes, I did tell you I enjoyed working with the colored pencils the most, but to be honest, all four mediums have their own advantages. Probably I would have used more Posca markers, but I own only a couple of them so that wasn’t the best choice even though the coloring that way was way faster compared to colored pencils. Also, I very much enjoyed working with the soft pastels. It is super-fast and gives those wonderful, smooth color transitions. But it is not great for coloring images with tiny details.

And of course, as you can see on the picture, I fussy cut my images with leaving a bit of a frame and I also pierced a hole with a Crop-a-Dile so I can hang my future charms. Oh, and I also colored on the white shrink plastic. That had a very funny and unexpected twist, but I will talk more about that soon. 

Once again, here are my images, stamped on three different types of shrink plastic, colored with four different types of mediums, cut out and ready for baking.

Most of the shrink plastics have an instruction on how to bake them, and so did the ones that I had from Stamperia. However, the third type (the sanded one) that I had, came without any packaging so I went with the same temperatures for all of them. But one thing is important, and that is to use preheated oven. On the packaging, it was written to heat the oven to 140°C and bake it for 3 minutes. But in general, you don’t need a stopwatch. It is enough if you look inside your oven and when the pieces are lying flat, they are ready to be taken out. So, I followed these instructions and here are the results.

{Edit: If you are using your household oven for this process, please check carefully the product instructions that the plastic is safe to use in your oven. Some people use dedicated small ovens for crafting (clay/ shrink etc) in a well ventilated space. 

If the instructions do not specifically state that the product is safe for oven use, then assume not, and you can use a heat tool. The ranger heat tool is more gentle than an embossing heat tool, and allows more control during the shrink if you keep the heat tool moving, and flip the item over if it starts to curl. A wooden skewer is useful to hold across the piece of plastic to stop it blowing away, and to stop it folding over on itself. Tweezers also can be helpful to flip over and shrink from both sides. When the item has shrunk, immediately place a wood block on top and press for 5 seconds, this helps ensure it cools flat. This process generally takes about 40-60 seconds depending on how large your item is}

So, yeah a bit funny. All the charms turned out gorgeous except the mama elephant. Now, what happened there is that the image is a bit longer, so when it started baking, curling and shrinking, the two ends touched and stuck together. A work-around that is to put a baking paper over your charm so the longer ends won’t touch directly. Also, some other conclusions are that the images colored with Posca markers and Prismacolor pencils turned out more vivid in color and the most opaque. The one colored with soft pastels was pretty too, but what I didn’t like about the bat-cat which was colored with alcohol markers is that you can see the marker strokes.

If translucency is your issue, you can always choose to use white shrink plastic or go over the colored side with a white acrylic paint. I didn’t do that but don’t forget it as a good option.

Anyway, as it was expected, I got warmed up and I wasn’t going to let this be my only batch of charms, so I went onto coloring some more. A little fun trick: if you wish to add more dimension to your charms, you can add a bit of color on the other side of the shrink film. That is what I did with the little blue elephant here. I colored it on one side completely and then flipped it over and colored only that heart so once it is baked, that detail looks more dimensional and it stands out. As the other side wasn’t sanded, I used Posca on it, while the rest of the elephant was colored with pencils. Sadly, this tiny detail is really hard to catch on camera but it is really fun in live.

On the white shrink plastic, I used only colored pencils. I did like how the colors were vivid on it, but it’s as if it bakes a bit differently…I am not really sure. With it, I got uneven charms more often than with clear film. Also, once it is shrunk, it is a bit thicker than transparent foil. Perhaps I am not objective, but personally I enjoyed working on clear plastic more.

Anyway, I didn’t forget to involve my kids. They were very excited to help me with my craft project but also to make some charms for themselves. And here you can see my two craft assistants.

For the charms to be more durable, I do recommend to seal the colored surface. There are many ways, such as using sealer spray, embossing powder, Mod-Podge seal, glass resin and of course glaze. I went with the PaperArtsy glaze. Sadly, I own only two of them and that is something I have to correct as soon as possible. The ones I have and that I used are PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Acrylic Glaze Matte (FF52) and Metallic (FF24). On the image below, I tried to catch for you the shimmer of the metallic glaze that I used.

 

Once the glaze was dry, the charms were ready to be put for use.

There are just so many ways to use these charms, and I have only scratched the surface with the examples that I will show you.
First, I went and created some jewellery and keychain decorations.

But mostly I was inspired to create some charms that I can use to decorate my journals, zippers, or just hang on my wallet or bag.

And let’s not forget using all those pretty threads that I am sure most of us have in our craft closets.

This was so much fun both for me and my kids. They are already making me promise to do this again next weekend. And there are so many ways you can use these charms. Next time I will make some charm bracelets for my daughter. My son wishes to make pins for his backpack. Also, I will try to seal the color with embossing powder, just to see how it looks. Probably the overall look is even more professional looking with glass resign, but I had a little accident with it that left me a bit traumatized, though I will leave this story for some other blog topic. 😊

Renata 💜

For those of you who are more visual, I have prepared a YouTube video as well.

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2020 #6 Jungle Vibes: Efi's in the Tropics with ZA {by Leandra Franich}

2020 Topic 6: Jungle Vibes

Intro
I stumbled across a random Facebook virtual crafting event on Saturday afternoon last weekend. People from the top to the bottom of the UK, plus a knitter from her gorgeous craft room in Oregon. It was nice to craft together, share stories, hear how everyone was getting on working and living from home and facing this new reality.

We shared our crafty projects with each other: knitting, cross stitch, jewellery, embroidery, box painting, even face painting - a fabulous mix. Fascinated by each story and project on the go, 90 mins passed in a blink and somehow I had my 'jungle' project more or less stamped and ready for colour.

It was reassuring in a time of 'almost lockdown' to meet new faces from across the nation (and world) who each had their own concerns, challenges and fears. But we also focussed on enjoying a positive couple of hours sharing our creativity with each other. It seems social distancing can a still be a way to meet people, even if it 'just' a virtual encounter. I suspect that this will become a new way for us to be in touch with each other, although you can't do anything too noisy near your device's microphone or you might inadvertently hog the spotlight! Just as well we are not all hammering eyelets these days so much huh!

~ Leandra

So yes, it's me, Leandra here in a rare appearance, I swear I am literally that nocturnal kiwi that hides in the forest. Here's my Zinski Jungle adventure - it really did help my anxiety levels to focus on colourful blobbing and purple efilumps!

Whether you are new to crafting or a dab hand, there is always plenty of information here on the PA blog that might help us all share a new skill with someone in your life, whether it is you or a loved one, I hope between us we can enjoy some quality crafting time together. 

In this post we are heading into the Zinski Jungle. Of course these Efilumps are in their natural habitat of colourful, tropical flowers and deep foliage above. It looks like they got dressed up specially for Mothers' Day this past Sunday, wearing their Sunday best, they are very happy to pose for a picture and share with you how they got ready!

A blog post starts well when you forget to take photos as you work right!!?? Just shows how out of the habit I am!  If you peek behind the stamping in the pic above, you can see a background! (Oh yes you can!) 

I used the reverse, black side of the a piece of Cut 'n' Dry Foam. Fun foam would work too, or a wedge of polystyrene, but that might have a squeak factor. Regardless, apply literally one tiny spot of paint to a flat foam-ish feeling something and squidge it, smudge it, smoosh it  about randomly. Yup, not hard! Honest!

I did stamp a few spots from my fave stamp from ECF04 too. And finished with some white paint to knock it all back a bit.I always do that before I stamp my images, its always easy to darken a light background later (infusions, sprays, distress ink), not so easy to lighten it!

You can see it here how the paint was just smooched over the cardboard, you can do this step directly onto the inside of a cereal box, that's a nice firm surface to use. I just used a sheet of 300gsm Heavy Smoothy Card.

Then I stamped some foliage (Zinski Art flowers) in black using Elena's ZinskiArt stamps. ZinskiArt Stamp Set 6 (ZA06) has the perfect foliage to create tropical flowers.

The next step is to add some colour to the stamped images, start light and build up some shading. You can see from our paint labels that some colours are opaque, and some are translucent, and some are semi-opaque. If you colour in with one of the more see-through paints, then you will not lose your stamped outline. Any paint can become less opaque if you add a bit of satin, matte or gloss glaze to it. A handy trcik to know!

And there are some useful flowers on ZinskiArt Set 07 (ZA07) too. I love the 'holey' ones!

 

You can also see that some stencilling came into play here too. {Both these stencils below are from the February 2020 Kay Carley release. See this blog post here for stockist info at the foot of the post.} This fluffy tree is PaperArtsy Stencil 170 (PS170) by Kay Carley, and to add detail I dabbed lots of colours over the green  tree blobs and added some fine pigment pen marks on top for detailing.

At the top PaperArtsy Stencil 172 (PS172) drapes down to create a sense of depth. 

I started with Toad Hall Fresco first underneath, and then I shifted the stencil to the right (bumped it) and applied Sage paint. This creates a shadow along the edge which is a nice trick to add some depth to any stencil really easily. Later on I added some warmer green and yellow to the trunk bits as it needed boosting to match the brightness of the flowers. It was a bit too grey-green initially.

Here you can see all the blobs of colours on the stencilled tree - blobs on blobs! just keep dabbing until they look better!!

Then tiny white dots from a white gel pen.

Here's a close up of the stalks, and how I outlined those and the leaves with pen, and I also splodged a tiny bit of Hyde Park Fresco Paint on the leaves too for added depth. 

For the border at the top, the thick foliage, you can see in this picture how just one stamp created that effect. From EGL02, the stamp top left on the stamp set by Gwen LaFleur shown below. This repeat stamping with paint and ink in increasingly darker colours creates that jungle foliage effect pretty well.

Here is the A4 card with the flowers along the bottom, foliage at the top and the stencilled leaves and tree. I'm pretty happy with it. Next we need our jungle animals to make an appearance!

In the same way I made the first background, for the piece of card for the elephants I smooched paint onto my firm-foam applicator another sheet of card in Blues, Purple-Blues, Greys and White with a touch of Coral for some lift.
{By the way, if you want the latest info on Fresco Paints, the on the Blog sidebar in 'The Classroom' Section, there are the Fresco updates for Aug, Sept, Nov 2019, plus Jan and March 2020, which is of course the most recent.Yes we have made tweaks to some of the older core colours to allow the new families to sit better as 6's.}

As before, I over-stamped some elephants, or as we like to refer to Elena's babies (Efilumps) onto the background from ZinskiArt Set 37 (ZA37).

As the efilumps have a textured background already with a bit of interest, all you need to add is some shading with coloured pencils, paint, or both! I just used paint. Translucent ones like Southern Skies, Glass Blue, and Bougainvillea with the odd patch of Cherry Red. For the record, blue + red or pink = purple! Our translucent shades may look dark from the label, but with a damp brush they can be used as soft tints, perfect for colouring in. The link to all the Frescos listed online is here.

 

I decided to stamp and paint 3 efilumps as I wasn't really sure what would fit nicely. I eventually decided I didn't really want to cover up my pretty flowers, so that meant I decided to only use 2 in the end. Someone had to go...ru-oh...they all look so endearing...

The colours and textures in the background show through the colour tint. It's effects like this that help make your project look a bit more snazzy and interesting. In general, I tried to add shading in logical 'shadow' zones. Here is Mummy Efi sitting atop a leftover piece of BG, you can see her trunk matches the card, once her eyeballs are white her face comes alive. You may also see I dotted a white gel pen for some more detail, I use the Signo Uniball as it never clogs, and as our Fresco paint is a chalk finish, you really can use any pen or pencil successfully on top as the sort of gritty chalk feel they produce is the perfect 'tooth' for most pens, pencils, felt tips/markers etc. Don't take my word for it, you must try it yourself!

And it is amazing how the efi's look a bit different again once sitting in their jungle home! It does look like they are waiting for Dad to arrive though doesn't it! I know Efi's are (probably) supposed to be grey BUT, in my jungle world normal is not OK, so I really wanted them to 'pop' in contrast to the jungle, and I wanted them to look a bit more jazzy than JUST grey. They could have been yellow, orange, or Purple...... and Purple was closer to grey...so that is what and why they are! :)

Onto the story of how Colin the Caterpillar became Willy the Worm. We'll call it artistic licence! Having ditched the large Efilump as his big bum hid the pretty flowers, I needed something smaller, so Colin the Caterpillar fitted the bill. (NB. This stamp set is available exclusively from our stockists, list at the bottom of this blog post here).

But, I cut him out, thinking I would hand-draw the legs and antennae back in place, and then realised that wasn't possible...so he had to transition into worm/slug. You can see the before on the Index sheet to the left, and the after, hmmmm.

I'd like to think that he's OK with this transition, but I must admit, he does look a bit sceptical! Perhaps I shouldn't have moved his pupils. He's oozing a pretty 'peeved' vibe!

Here's hoping he settles into his new jungle life, but it looks like he's pretty keen to meet the Efi's!! I hope they don't stand on him or he'll be oozing something quite different! Poor Colin.

I mounted my card onto black foam core for a firm support. Here's a reminder of the finished piece.

That's it from me, each day has been a bit of a bombshell of late, but tell me, how are YOU all doing? I hope you feel safe and secure wherever you may be. It's been a roller-coaster the past few weeks hey? I'm sure you have all been in touch with friends and family across the globe trying to predict what happens next, how we will pay the bills, keep a routine, live our lives. I guess history lets us know we tend to adapt in the face of adversity, and I sincerely hope that is the case for you all. Like you we have significant worries about our vulnerable friends and family, and it is hard not being able to be there physically to support family like we normally would. 

To the internet we all turn, looking for escape, yet close contact. We might be looking for factual information, or to escape in a box set. In this virtual place full of so much content, I hope here on the blog we share some ideas that help you get through. Crafting is a bit like a refreshing walk or a good book or a movie... when you get pulled into 'the now', you forget everything else, even if it is for an hour or two. That forgetting is a relief, so perhaps we can help you on that front. 

I hope this nudges you to pull out the paints and have a bit of a play

Take care and please stay safe

Leandra x