Polymer clay play

Back in the summer, Annie & Karen taught me how to make polymer clay tiles and decorate them with PearlEx, and cooking them in the Melting Pot. I loved the effects, and have been meaning to try it again, but have never managed to find the time to do so. And then today, whilst looking for something else, I came across the Melting Pot and the polymer clay, and let myself get thoroughly distracted !!!

Click on the picture for more detail.

Most of these pieces were made in moulds, with just a few handmade tiles, shapes & letters. Some of the moulds (the lizard, the large oval and the triangle with the rounded corners) are Krafty Lady moulds, and two of those have a ridge halfway down the sides as they are pendant moulds. This way, I can but beading wire of some kind to make a fairly invisible way of attaching them to a chain or cord. Some of the moulds are home made moulds, made from charms and other 3-D items, and some moulds are from the Enchanted Gallery (dragonflies) or from an EBay seller who seems to have stopped making moulds (butterflies).

I dusted the moulds with Pearl Ex, which not only colours the pieces, but acts as a good release agent. I kneaded the black clay - Fimo Soft - until it was easy to shape, then presed it into the moulds. I tried to keep the pieces thin, then unmoulded them onto pieces of silicone coated non-stick baking paper that i had cut to be the correct size to fit in the Melting Pot pan. The tiles, letters and shapes were made by kneading the fimo until soft and plaible, rolling it out thinly (I used lolly sticks either side of the clay, and a paintbrush as a rolling pin!) and then stamping into the clay with a finely detailed flourish/scroll stamp (Tim Holtz Garment District). I brushed the clay with pearlEx and used a polymer clay blade to cut into squares and rectangles, or used little pastry cutters to cut the shapes. I added more Peal Ex here and there to change the colours, the pieces look more effective if there is more than one colour on them.

Once I had made all my pieces and laid them out on the silicone papers, I turned the Melting Pot on, at the highest te,mperature, and placed it on a board on top of the hob, so that the hob extraction fan could suck away any fumes. When Anbnie & Karen did this in the summer, they left the clay peices coooking for about 20 minutes. I sson realised that with my much thinner peices, 10 inutes was enough for most of them. Only the mermaid and the two pendants got the full 20 minutes. I cooked the embellishements above (plus duplicates of many of them) in about 12 batches, which took me about 2 hours.

Some of them looked rather too shiny and bright, so I added Treasure Gold here and there to tone them down a bit (the heart & the pillar).

This technique is really easy, I've had a fun afternoon, and I now have a great stock of gorgeous embellishements in my stash!

Gauzy gesso backgrounds

Back in October 2007, I created some textured black gesso backgrounds, which I used on formica samples to make necklaces:

http://adriennegoodenough.blogspot.com/2007/09/art-soul-necklaces.html

This is a variation on that technique, which makes a really lovely background. I usually make 3 or 4 sheets at the same time - this means the first sheet is dry enough for the next part of the process by the time I've done each thing to all 4 sheets.

First take an A4 sheet of cardstock, and old brush, some loose weave gauze or lightweight scrim (the kind that's used for bandage wrappings, I found mine on EBay), and some gesso - black or white (or even coloured) - I use Daler Rowney brand.

Cut your gauze into little random raggedy pieces - smallest about an inch by an inch and a half, largest maybe as big as 2 inches by 2 and a half or even an inch by 3 inches. Stretch them and pull them out of a shape a little, so that the edges get more raggedy, and the weave is less even.

Coat some of your cardstock with gesso - about an ATC sized peice - not too thin or too thick, just a generous coat - and drop a piece of gauze on the painted area. Use your brush to dab the gauze all over, embedding the gauze into the gesso. It doesn't matter if the gauze rucks up a little, or if an edge got folded - that's all fine. There should already be enough gesso on your brush to do this, but if you need a little more, then add it.

Repeat with the next section of the cardstock and another piece of gauze, and so on until your cardstock is all black (or white) and has gauze pieces emebdded all over it. Leave uneven open spaces between the gauze - as wide as a couple of inches in places, narrow as 1/4 inch in others. You will have something like this (click on picture to get a better view):


Now you need a stamp. It should be bold, and curly - a flourish, or perhaps something like this:



Take your gesso & gauze sheet, and again working in sections, give it another coat of gesso - this will cover any small unpainted bits you may see in the gauze, and will leave you with wet gesso in the random gaps. Stamp your stamp into the wet gesso in the gaps. The gesso doesn't need to be thick to do this - gesso is expensive, and thick gesso takes ages to dry. The end result will be fine with a thin coat. Lift, and stamp into the next gap.

Keep going until you sheet is coated with wet gesso, and all gaps have been stamped into. WASH THE STAMP. Do not let it dry with the gesso on or you may ruin it. Now you have something like this, if you used black gesso:


Or this, if you used white gesso:


Now add colour. This is a sample to show you how different colours can look on black. I used 9 colours of Treasure Gold wax, applied lightly (as if the surface was hot). The golds and pale colours show up much more than the dark colours. I let it dry for a while and then gave it all a rub with a soft cloth to bring out the shine. Click on the image for a better view.


And this is how the black sheet looks when all the rub on wax is one colour.


If you don't have any Treasure Gold or Rub'n'Buff or wax rub ons, I think you could get a similar effect by dry brshing metallic or interference acrylic paint on, or maybe even swiping the sheet with a versamark watermark pad and brushing the whole sheet with Pearl Ex, which will stick to the ink.

Finally, I sprayed my white gesso sample with a colourwash spray - in this case, Radiant Rain Emerald Isle. It's interesting how the colour disappears as it dries, here's a pic of a wet sheet next to a dry one:

Radiant Rain always looks betterif you use more than one colour, this is how the sheet looked when I'd finished it. I sprayed with Stargazer, which is a lilac ink with a green shimmer. It doesn't change the colour much but it adds to the richness. Finally, I rubbed all over the sheet lightly with Royal Amethyst Treasure Gold:

Pocket locket

I needed to make something for Pauline on the theme of 'women's faces'. I had all sorts of weird and wonderful ideas, but settled on something simple, and (I hope) elegant.


I bought this large heart shaped locket a long time ago, and have been waiting for the right time to use it. Pauline likes purple, so I gave it a rub with Royal Amethyst Treasure Gold, left it for a while, then polished it with a soft cloth to make it shine.


For the insides, I took some watercolour paper, then stamped the two faces (both Stampers Anonymous stamps) with Ranger perfect medium, then brushed gently with several shades of purple chalks. I then brushed with Plum Perfect Pearls, which gave a lovely shimmer. However, they didn't look quite 'finished', so I gave them a thin coat of soft gel medium, and stamped into it with a detailed stamp. I let it dry, and gave it a very thin coat of White Fire Treasure Gold, using a very light touch, just skimming over the high points. You can't see this on the scan, but it gives it a sort of tapestry look, and you can see the pattern of the stamp I used when you move the locket in the light. Sadly, the coat of gel medium covered up the Perfect Pearl shimmer, but overall it improved the images!


I hope Pauline likes it.

Bird mobile

This is a fun mobile I just created for a swap themed 'birds'. Where would birds be except in the air? The mobile parts are willow twigs with gold embossing powder, and the 'strings' are either tiger tail beading wire or very fine brass wire from a posh Rioja bottle! The birds are all cut from handmade background papers from my 'collection' aka hoard. I made a bird template, plus a reverse template, and cut 20 birds, each from a different paper, then glued them together. I stamped them all with a Stampcamp 'marble veining' stamp and gold embossed them, to bring some cohesion to such a wide variety of papers. I finally added the 'eyes' - small circles left over on a sheet of peel offs.


Here are some close up pictuires of all the little birdies...




I hope Wendy likes it. All I have to do it work out how on earth to package it for posting to her!

Paper quilt for Chrissy

It was Chrissy's birthday in early December. I started making this a few days beforehand in the vague belief that I could at least get it posted by her birthday. And then I was finding it all took more time and thought than I'd anticipated, and Christmas preparations began to intrude. And sometimes I just sat there and looked at it for a while and couldn't see what I should do next.

But finally, I finished it this morning. And I am really pleased with it. I think this is harder to let go of than Maggi's was. So, why don't I make one for myself? Somehow, half the satisfaction is the fact that it is a gift I am making, and I don't know if I could ever finish one for myself, or whether I would be as exacting - I suspect
some 'that will do' might creep in!

Maybe making one of these for me should be my New Year's Resolution....



This is all made from heavy weight watercolour paper, some cut into pieces and some torn, then sprayed with various metallic colourwashes - a combination of Radiant Rain and those from Outside the Margins. I used about half of the papers I sprayed. I never know what shape these quilts will be until I see the papers together - Maggi's was about A4, this one is about 7 inches wide by about15 inches tall.



Some detail of the top section. As you can see, some of the papers were put through Cuttlebug folders in my Wizard after spraying. The fibre down the left was sent to me in a bag of fibres -I wish I could remember where from because it is lovely - 'raw' space dyed fleece threaded through one of the new 'ladder type' synthetic yarns - and I would love some more of it because this was about 3/4 of what I had, but the colours and texture were perfect for this piece.

The small tags on the left were punched from a handmade background (thanks, Trish!), attached with brads, and the little starry things were coloured using alcohol inks, then attached to the tags with different coloured brads. The gold skeleton leaf has a coating of Jo Sonya gold dust, giving it sparkle. The flowers were two layers punched from black/gold pearlescent card, curled using a ball tool, and attached using brads. The elements down the right hand side of the piece are small flowers punched from the same handmade background paper, with small pieces of dark copper organza behind them, again attached with brads. A quick zap with a heat gun curled the organza up into interesting little cup shapes.


The squares above and below the main image are gold plastic sequins - Guterman - attached with gold thread through organza ribbon, with a pearlised cream bead holding the whole thing together. The image is cut from an old calendar page with beautiful images painted by Helena Nelson-Reed. I painted over it with soft gel medium, immediately gave it a second coat at 90 degrees - this gives the effect of it being woven fabric - then added a little more gel at the corners and stamped into it. A very light touching of Treasure Gold wax over the whole thing picks up the high points and gives a lovely effect (thanks for discovering and sharing that, Karen!). the image was mounted onto dark red card, then given a 'frame' of gold embossing powder. Both edges of the side pieces were also edged with gold embossing powder.


The bottom section has 3 squares of the same handmade background, overstamped in Galaxy Gold Brilliance ink, attached with gold thread, with shell buttons sewn on top, the hands are made from air dry clay in Krafty Lady moulds (in Zeb's studio in October '07), painted gold with acrylic paint and then coloured with Treasure Gold Onyxite. Not that I hoard things in my stash, you understand, I just keep things until i find the perfect use for them. Sometimes a long time after I acquire them.

I really enjoyed making this piece, even though it sat on my table for 5 weeks, and I hope Chrissy likes it too.

IT girl for Jessie

One of the yahoo groups I am in is running an 'IT' girl swap. Each month everybody makes a gift for the member who is the 'IT' girl for that month, and who sets the theme. Jessie's theme is 'TIME', so what could be more appropriate than a clock?


I took inspiration from Diana Twedt, whose work I love. She often creates frames using foam board and scraps of paper.

The clock is made from foam board, covered in brown paper, then scraps of textured papers. I painted it with black gesso, then gave it two coats of Golden's iridescent copper paint, before rubbing it with several colours of Treasure Gold, and giving it a good polish with a dried out baby wipe to shine it up.

I then added the clock fixings, and some small black gems to act as 'numerals'.

The picture below shows the detail a little better:


I hope Jessie likes it.

A few ATCs

A few ATCs I have made for swaps:

The theme was chinese proverbs. I used pre printed mirror card, coloured red with alcohol ink. The central panel was black glossy cardstock with an image stamped and gold embossed, and finally the proverb was printed onto copy paper and edged with red.


This was for e 'flight' theme. The background is a photo I took of the landscape in mid Wales, the foreground is a digital collage I made and printed onto a transparency.


This ATC was for a 'techniques' theme - the background is stamped with gold Brilliance ink on glossy white card, then rubbed over with eggplant and cranberry dye inks. The image is a piece of fantasy film, which has been ironed onto an inked stamp.


This was done for the 'jigsaw' theme. The background is cardstock painted with Golden iridescent copper paint, then stamped and embossed using a grungy number stamp. the small jigsaw piece was painted with Golden micaceous iron oxide, and dotted with an Inkessentials white pen, before being mounted onto a piece of folded card which opens out so that you can see the following quote:

There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle. (Deepak Chopra)


This is another digital collage, with some stamping and glitter on top - the theme was 'postal correspondence'.

Beadazzled swap

I am in a swap where beads had to form part of the item - I considered making a small beaded paper quilt, but in the end decided to make jewellery.

The necklace is a piece of fine memory wire, with some seed and bugle beads and a large disc of jasper, and the earrings use the same seed beads and small pieces of jasper. The large jasper disc is a bit darker than it looks on the photograph.

All the beads were from a 'Tropical Surf bead soup' box from Beverly Gilbert, whose class I took at Art & Soul last year. Beverly is a fabulous bead artist and a great teacher, I recommend her classes highly.

This is whizzing around the world to Australia, where I hope Trizzy likes it - I thought the colours would suit her!

Cuttlebug swap

I am in a swap where an element of the swap item must be made using a Cuttlebug folder. I made a card!! This is getting to be a habit - no cards for months then 3 in the last week or two!




I sprayed some watercolour paper with Outside the Margin's Tungsten Carbide and Granite Luster colour washes, and another sheet with Gold. I ran the darker sheet through my Wizard in a diamond patterned Cuttlebug folder. I also sprayed some tags to match the darker paper and ran those through the Wizard in the same Cuttlebug folder.

I attached 3 gold charms to the tags, attached the tags to the gold card with gold brads, and attached the gold card to the dark card with double sided tape.

A simple card which looks rich and textured.

Paper quilt

I have been working on an idea for a birthday gift for my friend Maggi. It has been slooshing around in my brain for a couple of weeks, but it didn't start coming together into a piece of art until yesterday. Sadly, I am now very late for Maggi's birthday, but as she likes to extend her birthday, I hope she won't mind too much!!!




I began by using colourwash sprays on several sheets of Fabriano cold press watercolour paper. I love how this paper absorbs the colours and seems to glow, it may be more expensive than others but I think it's worth the extra cost. One of the sheets came out a lovely pale coppery colour, with steely blue and slightly gold areas. I used this as the base for the piece, which is around A4 sized.

For the top and bottom embellishments, I punched small flower shapes out of a deep red and gold background paper, then cut some coppery bronze organza and layered it over both punched pieces and used brads to hold the fabric and paper in place. I gave the black brads a little touch of copper Treasure Gold to tone them down before I used them.

The circles down the side are the same deep red paper, run through a different cuttlebug folder, and with 2 layers of flower shapes punched from deep black/gold cardstock added using brads.

The horizontal piece under the circles is the same deep red background paper with little metal beads and sequins added. I coloured the metal beads with 'rust' alcohol ink and Treasure Gold in copper and indigo, then attached them to the paper with fine copper wire.

The small squares with hearts are the same paper, overstamped with gold ink in a tile pattern. The hearts are shell buttons and I attached them to the paper with fine copper wire, adding a small bugle bead to cover the holes. I added a couple of the paper flowers I had punched out of the top border to fill the gaps between the squares.

The large heart is made from Hearty air dry clay, painted with black gesso, then rubbed with indigo, ruby and copper Treasure Gold. It is mounted on a torn piece of darker steely blue & tungsten watercolour paper, which I ran through the Wizard in a cuttlebug folder with a diamond pattern. I stamped small text on the paper before adding the heart.

The piece above the heart is the last of the deep red background paper. I sprayed some white tags with colourwash sprays, then ran them through the Wizard in a brocade patterned cuttlebug folder. I added Treasure Gold in copper, gold and sapphire to add colour and give them depth, then added a small charm to each using fine cotton thread. For sequins glued to the corners added the final touch.

The final and largest element of the piece was made by stamping charcoal coloured Xpandaprint onto an interesting paper bag, then heating with a heat gun to make the Xpandaprint bubble up. I rubbed this carefully with gold and copper Treasure Gold, and mounted it onto some more of the steely blue watercolour paper, which I also stamped with text.

I am really pleased with this piece, I am tempted to frame it and keep it myself, I hope Maggi likes it!!!

Burgundy & lime skinny page

What a colour combination - it's WAY out of my comfort zone!!!! I apologise for the scan quality - my scanner hates anything with dimension.



For this side of the page, I adhered green tissue over green cardstock, then stamped some text using deep red ink. I added a piece of burgundy coloured ribbon, which was sheer with flocking - I thought it added interest and texture. I took some hot press heavy watercolour paper, and spritzed it with several red colourwashes, then gave it a coat of Tulip non permanent glitter, then a final spray of Adirondack raisin colourwash.

I dried the cardstock, cut it into pieces, and ran it through the Wizard in a Cuttlebug folder. For the light green embellishment, I spritzed some Stampbord with water, then zapped it with a Milwaukee style heat gun, and the combination of heat and water created little bumps. I painted it with acrylic ink, then stamped it using Crimson Copper Brilliance ink, and embossed it with clear embossing powder.


For this side of the page, I adhered coloured deli paper. I had sprayed this green using Lime Jello colourwash spray from Aileen. I stamped over the top of the green paper using chalk ink and a texture stamp from Hearts in Touch.

I made some gauze 'paper', something Jessie told me about:

Take a melamine tray, and lay a sheet of silicone baking paper on it. Lay a sheet of cling film/saran wrap on top, then a sheet of gauze (or scrim) on top of that. Spritz the gauze lightly with Johnson's Klear/Future floor polish - just enough to dampen it, not enough to make it soggy. Move the gauze around on the cling film with your fingers until you have an interesting collection of ripples and rucks in the fabric. Next, spray with colourwashes (usually more than one colour, and they blend into one another beautifully, but for this project it had to be burgundy so I used Ranger Adirondack raisin).

Finally, lay another sheet of silicone baking paper over the top, lift the 'sandwich' off the tray, and lay it on a heatproof surface and iron the whole thing using a hot dry iron. The liquid polish and colour will sizzle and hiss, but the piece will dry, and the heat will also fuse the gauze to the cling film/saran wrap, leaving you with a 'paper' which can be adhered to your artwork using double sided tape or gel medium. It can also be die-cut or punched.

I added some gauze to the left hand side of the page, and die cut some flower shapes form the offcuts of the watercolour paper I used earlier. I die cut some circles form the lime green background offcuts, and stamped a little girl's face on them. I die cut some smaller flowers from the gauze, and added the embellishments to the page using gel medium.

Experimental ATCs

An ATC for a swap with the theme of 'Experimental'. I made some background paper by laying a nappy liner (brands which work are Gerber in the US or Boots own brand in the UK) onto a sheet of non stick baking paper, the sprinkling small pieces of Fantasy film and snippets of Angelina fibre all over it. I then sprinkled Opals embossing powders in pinks and blues onto the nappy liner, covered it all with a second nappy liner and another sheet of non stick baking paper, then ironed it all with a hot dry iron. You can see the Opals melting, and can 'move' the liquid embossing powder with your iron. Wait until cool, peel apart. you can add more embossing powder, fantasy film or fibres at this point, and re-iron if you do.

The Opals melt into the nappy liner and the nappy liner will start to melt into holes, so be careful not to iron it all for too long! When you peel it apart it may not look too inspiring, but if you give it a quick blast with your heat gun, the surface will become shiny. You end up with a flexible sheet that you can use in a variety of projects.

I adhered this Opals paper to some lilac pearlescent paper using gel medium, then cut it up and layered onto ATC sized card.

The butterflies are made form tyvek. You can get tyvek 'paper' and tyvek 'fabric'. They both work, but the fabric is much easier to use for this technique and gives a more flexible result. I took a butterfly stamp, painted a piece of tyvek with watered down lumiere paint, cut it into pieces, and laid each piece on the stamp, covered with non stick paper and ironed it. The tyvek melts quite quickly so you have to keep a careful eye on what you're doing!

I peeled the tyvek off the stamps, and cut around the butterflies. The body is gold dimensional paint, left to dry overnight, then coloured with Treasure Gold in Royal Amethyst. I made some tine antenna from gold wire, and added those before finishing the ATC with a gold sun charm, and a stripe of Golden's gold mica flakes small.

Image transfer card

Well, I didn't make a card for months, and then I made two in a week!



This card is for Jenny, and the lady on the front is an image transfer created from a simple digital collage. I found a picture of some lace on Google, and worked on it in Photoshop Elements. I removed the background with the magic wand tool, then changed the colour of the lace. The lady is a copyright free image from Art-e-zine, and I changed the colours to be blue hues, and then layered her over the lace background and printed. I smeared the print with a thin layer of regluar matte medium, and smeared a piece of linen with a similar thin coat, then ran the paper and fabric threough the Wizard, twice.

I layered the transfer onto pearlescent blue card, duck egg blue matte card, and then onto the main background, which is stamped and embossed pearlescent blue card. 3 little start charms finished it off nicely!

Fiona's IT girl gift

Layers of watercolour paper, coloured with colourwashes,
some embossed in Cuttlebug folders.

I combined the papers with gel medium image transfers onto linen,
ribbons, organza, sequins and beads to make a paper quilt.
Inspired by Beryl Taylor.....

I hope Fiona likes it!

Image transfer card

This is a card I made for an image transfer swap on CCSwaps. I haven't made a card for months. The botanical image was transferred to a piece of linen by printing the image onto Epson double sided matte photo paper, then smearing both the image and the fabric with a thin layer of Golden regular matte gel medium, and running the paper and fabric through the Wizard.

I am finding this method for creating image transfers is pretty reliable and works well onto fabric, gessoed mount board, watercolour paper...


I layered the fabric image transfer onto watercolour paper, then onto embossed card (used the 'distressed stripes Cuttlebug folder for this), and then again onto more watercolour paper. The papers were coloured with pesto and butterscotch colorwashes, and I used small scraps with brads and ribbon to make the embellishments above and below the main image. The whole thing was layered onto green cardstock.

And now for something completely different

I am making a gift for Fiona, based on the theme of 'Inspiration' - whatever inspires me as an artist. It has been hard for me to think of one thing or person that inspires me, as I draw inspiration from all sorts of places.

So I put that to one side, and started working on another swap - an image transfer swap Annie, and then I found my inspiration LOL


I am inspired by Beryl Taylor's work. She makes beautiful wall hangings from watercolour paper and fabric. But the thought of all the sewing puts me off. So, I decided to see if I could create something based on her work with less sewing and no fabric. I'm delighted to say the watercolour paper held up well!

I used colourwashes in greens (Annie's favourite colour) for the background, with splashes of autumnal golds, on torm pieces of heavy watercolour paper. I used 2 gel medium onto fabric transfers, and layered the papers and fabrics together with gel medium. I added brads to one strip of paper, and eyelets to another, then sewed beads and sequins onto ribbons through the watercolour paper. I'm quite pleased with this, and now I have the process sorted out, I'll make a start on Fiona's!!! Thinking mainly turquoisey blues with a touch of hot pink or purple...

Watch this space!

Lutradur ATC

This ATC is made using lutradur. The lutradur was charcoal coloured, so I added some subtle gold tones using a colorwash spray, then used a stencil and Xpandaprint to create the fern. Xpandaprint is something where less is definitely more. If you use too much, when you heat it, you have mountains instead of subtly raised bobbled texture. I coloured the fern with Treasure Gold wax rub ons, then used a hot marks tool melt a squiggly pattern into the lutradur. I adhered it to a dark gold cardstock using matte gel medium, and added the dragonfly charm. Finally, I punched a couple of small holes and threaded beaded wire through them.

Shrink plastic playtime

I've been playing with shrink plastic. Please excuse the awful scans, my Hewlett Packard all in one scanner, copier, printer doesn't like scanning anything which isn't completely flat.

I shrink all my shrink plastic on a thick wooden board. If you shrink it on top of paper, it will probably stick to your paper half way through the process and you'll never get them apart!!! I think a craft sheet base is also good.

Lots of people have trouble with shrink plastic, I used to when I used the Milwaukee type heat gun and I don't have any trouble since switching to the 'hair dryer' style of heat gun. I also take the heat away once the plastic starts to 'move' and bring it back to specific spots to try and control the process. If it starts curling, aim the heat to the underside of the curl and it will curl back and flatten out. If you do this throughout the shrinking process, it is unlikely to curl enough to stick to itself. When you think it;s finished shrinking, if it's not flat enough for you, you can use a pallette knife to flip it over and give the back a bit of heat. Flip it back, and if it's still not as flat as you'd like, lay an acrylic block on it and leave it to cool under the block - if you press, you will also squash the plastic and it can go out of shape.

Remember when adding colour to shrink plastic that it intensifies hugely and often darkens as the plastic shrinks. If you lightly sand the shrink plastic before colouring, it 'grabs' the colour better. Use a nail buffer or the sanding blocks Lucky Squirrel sell for the purpose, or very very fine sandpaper. sand one way, then again at 90 degrees, so the sanding is 'cross hatched'. If you want your shrink plastic to have holes in it, or a particular shape, cut it out before heating, as you won't be able to cut it afterwards.

If you want all over colour, add just enough that you can only just see the colour, and you will probably find you've added more than you planned once shrunk! You can use chalks (probably the best think to colour clear shrink), colouring pencils (good for background colour), pigment inks (good for background colour and images, but pretty opaque), Brilliance inks (good for everything, but need to dry overnight for images), Stazon (great for images).

Remember, you can click on the images to see larger versions showing more detail.


This pair of ATCs use 3 different colours of shrink plastic in 3 different ways. The ATC on the left has embellishments made from clear shrink plastic, stamped on with Galaxy Gold brilliance ink (and left overnight to dry - this ink is marvellous on shrink plastic but it really needs that drying time). The colour is added on the same side as the images, also Brilliance ink (but you don't need this to dry before shrinking, as it doesn't matter if it smudges. Shrink, and edge with a Brilliance ink.

The ATC on the right has a randomly shaped left over piece of black shrink plastic (although colour probably doesn't matter here) which I coated with a pretty thick coat of Stewart Gill Pearlise (Black Pearl) . This technique works will all Stewart Gill paints, I haven't tried it with other fabric paints, and it doesn't work with ordinary acrylics, as far as I know. It's something to do with the binder in the paint, I think. Anyway, once the paint is on, just heat and shrink (more carefully and slowly than usual, in stages if necessary, you want it to curl as little as possible). The paint ruffles and creates an 'encrusted' texture on the surface of the shrink plastic. The texture also has some shimmer, which means if you get your colour combinations right, it can look like bronze which has been under the sea for centuries...

The other piece of shrink plastic was white, but I added some ochre pigment ink to soften the background colour, then stamped the image with black Stazon ink. This is is fantastic for using with shrink plastic - it dries very quickly and is permanenet, so great for images.



This dangly decoration design is based on a lovely gift Maggi sent me. She made hers in paper, I decided to try it in shrink plastic. I used clear shrink plastic, and stamped all images with black Stazon. I added background colour using Colorbox pigment inks. The smallest squares were punched using an inchie punch, the others were careful measured and cut squares. It's all 'Lucky Squirrel' brand shrink plastic, and I wasn't careful to keep the orientation of the shrink the same after I had punched. The shrink plastic shrinks ever so slightly more in one direction than the other, so my carefully measured squares have come out as diamond shapes. No problem with that, but I would have liked it if they had all been short and fat or tall and thin. I will make another, ensuring I keep all the shrink the same way up!

I have noticed that tall oblong pieces often shrink into parallellograms, or shrink 'off square', and squares often turn into diamonds. I wish they'd invent a shrink plastic which shrank in completely true proportion to the original. This effect shows more and more the larger your piece is. So if you don't want it to be noticed, work with pieces which are less than 2 inches in any dimension before shrinking!

Opals embossing powder & ironing

I have wanted to play with Annette's 'Ironed Opals' technique for some time, but don't have anywhere to buy the Vilene stuff Annette uses. I'm also not quite sure which Vilene product it is. Today, I decided not to let that stop me experimenting, so I tried the technique using what I have at home. I bought some nappy liners a long time ago, but could never make them go into interesting holes (which is what I had bought them for!!!). Today, I laid a nappy liner on a piece of non-stick baking paper, then laid a sheet of iridescent gift wrap on top, then sprinkled with Opals, added another nappy liner, plus another layer of non stick paper, and ironed the whole thing:


You can see the gap half way down on the left where there was no gift wrap. The nappy liner behaves differently when there is nothing to stabilise it.

So, I tried just using 2 nappy liners with a layer of Opals between them:


The Opals fuse the nappy liners together, and if everything gets hot enough, the nappy liners start to make holes. When you peel the Opals sheet from the non-stick paper, it is not very shiny. A quick blast from the heat gun brings back the shine. It also makes more holes, and enlarges holes made whilst ironing. It's a balance between getting the shine back and not destroying the whole piece!

Next, I decided to try and stabilise the nappy liners by adding scraps of gift wrap, and sprinkling snippets of metallic fibres over the 'sandwich filling' between the nappy liners. And I like the 'fabric' of this best (not so sure about the colours LOL):


The scraps of gift wrap stop holes appearing in the nappy liner, so do little piles of the metallic fibre stuff, cut into short lengths. The metallic fibre is something I bought from BitsNPeices4U in the belief that they might be fusible fibres (which they are not). Click on the pictures above for more detail.

Christmas presents

I have been busy making 24 Christmas presents for the 12 days of Christmas swap on CC Swaps yahoo group.

I won't spoil the surprise for the recipients by posting pictures of what I made, but I was so pleased with the way they looked when I'd finished wrapping them (never my strong point LOL) that I thought I'd share that here.

For the smaller presents, I sprayed mulberry or silk papers with colourwash sprays, and for the larger flatter gifts, I crumpled brown paper up then sprayed each sheet with 3 colours of Radiant Rain. A quick handmade tag and tied it all up with soem interesting balck yarn to add drama. I hope the recipients realise that the wrapping is part of the gift, to be used in their art!