Hi friends, you may  noticed my posts about earrings made of shrink plastic. If not, here they are, you can chceck if you want:
butterfly earrings
painted earrings 

I decided to show you the process of working with this material, and maybe share some tips.

Shrink plastic is a great material for creating pendants, cabochons, beads, keytainers and so on. It can be used for jewelry, scrapbooking, collages, or any kind of acesstories. As the name suggests, it is a kind of plastich which shrinks when it is heated. It is very easy to use and you can decorate it with many techniques.

You can buy shrink plastic as sheets in various sizes. I prefer A4 format, because it allows you create bigger pieces with less waste. One side of the sheets is usually roughened. If not, you can use sandpaper to prepare the surface. It is important, because the paint or ink can´t set on the glossy side. Also, you can buy this sheets in various colors. I buy only transparent so I could paint it on my own.

For a better insight I will show you the whole process on a pendant I wear on the first picture.

🔵 First we need to decide what we want to create. I wanted a butterfly, but I love improvising, so I just cut a shape out of a paper. I will use it as a pattern. It is useful also if you want to create earrings so both pendants will look the same. You can also draw some basic lines on a paper pattern and redraw it on the plastic sheet thanks to its transparency. The most important thing - you have to think about size. The sheet shrinks about three times of its size.

🔵 After redrawing we can cut out the shape with scissors. It goes smoothly, but you have to be careful while scissoring notches, because the plastic can be broken easily. Then you can draw lines with pencil and start to paint. I have already tried crayons, liners and acrylic paint and I must say acrylic paint is the best. You can combine it with waterproof liners. Crayons have too dark colors after shrinking.

🔵 I made those black lines and now I can fill the rest with light turquoise color. Think about the transparency. The back side will be also colorful, so it should be nice. You don´t have to make the painted layer thick. Colors will be intensified after shrinking.

🔵 I added also some black lines with liner. If you make white dots, you can add more color, because it looks nice when it shinks. It has some kind of 3D effect. You can paint layer after layer, but also paint the whole picture at once so it will look the same from the back side.

🔵 I heat it in the owen usually set the temperature at 200 °C, but it is better when you chceck it after 3 minutes, because it could already started to shrink. It looks weird and twisted at the beginning, but don´t panic, it needs time to shrink perfectly. Don´t take it from the owen before it is fully flat and maybe it is better to wait a few minutes, because when it is hot, it is soft.

We can compare now the size before and after shrinking.

🔵 The plastic is light and can be easily pierced with the drill. If you want holes for pendants, do not make them before shrinking with punching machine. The holes will be too big and the pendant can be easily broken in the area around the hole.

🔵 I made small holes and added rings and lace.

🔵 While doing butterfly pendant I also made this simple earrings. It is better when you create more things at once. It saves time and energy when you can put more thing into the owen. There should be some space between, because if you turn on the blower the plastic can move and stick together while touching.

Here are some more examples I made:

So guys, I hope you were inspired and also try this great material to create something original ... Let me know if you already have some experience with it :)

 

Thanks for watching!

 
 

Follow me on Steemit

Facebook Instagram Youtube