Thursday, August 08, 2013

Tangled ShrinkyDink - First Try

I've working on the best technique and materials for making stitch markers with ShrinkyDink and tangles. I really need to get some alcohol-based pens as the microns smear too much although they do bake permanent. Since the ink wasn't permanent and smeared, I added the color on the back. After baking, I found that the bottom-or maybe it was the inside center-pushed out around the edges so I'll need to take that into consideration as I continue. Also, even though I used a normal hole punch size of 1/8", the hole was way too tiny after shrinking so I'll need to either use a bigger hole punch or use a drill to make the hole larger after shrinking.

Also, the instructions for ShrinkyDinks said to place the piece on a piece of brown paper bag, then after taking it out of the oven to press it with a pad or folded paper. When we did this, the brown paper bag got stuck onto the back of the piece and had to be softened with water and scraped off. I still haven't gotten all of it off though.

One thing that made it easier was that I purchased a Fiskars Round 'n Round X-Large Easy Squeeze Punch which punches out a 2" round circle which shrinks down to about the size of a nickle. It was about $18 at Michaels but I had a 40% off one item at original price coupon so the price was more in my price range.

Anyway, here's the finished test product that I placed on the scanner since my camera has gone awol. Pressing it with the pad also meant it lost any shine it may have had so maybe I'll have to add some protection to it to get it shiny again.


1 comment:

ACreativeDreamer said...

Hi Dar, thanks so much for stopping by my blog and asking such a great question. I wanted to answer you here so you'd be sure to see it! You asked what sort of pencils I had used to color the film before baking... to be honest with you, I don't use colored pencils very much, so I used some that were sitting in a drawer that I think my kids had used in school. Most likely just good old Crayola.

I think there's really a trick to getting the colors just right on the shrink film... and that's being sure to color much lighter than you think you will need to.

As the plastic shrinks the color intensifies a great deal, so if you add lots of color before baking, it tends to turn out more like a blob of color rather than shading.

I also color lightly in one direction across the back of the plastic, then turn the piece and color lightly in the other direction, sort of like cross hatching. When the plastic shrinks that seems to provide a more uniform color.

I hope that helps... and please, if I can offer any more tips, just email me. You'll find the addy on my blog.

Thanks!
June