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.
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}
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.
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First, I went and created some jewellery and keychain decorations.
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