Shrink Plastic Charm Tutorial

Today i'm going to show you how to make this wonderful Shrink Plastic Charm!

First gather your supplies:

• piece of #6 recycled plastic (I used a washed out food container) 
• a pair of scissors (i used Tim Holtz Scissors)
• non-stick craft mat
• permanent markers (any brand you like is fine)
• StazOn ink pad in the color you choose (I used black)
• Your heat tool
• Hole punch 
• Tweezers or something to hold onto plastic while heating it
• And last but not least your STAMPS!! (I used the bird man by silver crow creations, and the star and word dream are part of the Tim Holtz collection by stampers anonymous)

Step 1: 

  Stamp your image on the plastic and cut out whatever shape you'd like your charm to be 

(remember these shrink to less than 1/2 the original size so the larger the better)

 Step 2: 
       Punch the hole in the plastic wherever you want the charm ring to go through

Step 3:
       Color the back side of your image and allow to dry for a minute.

                                              (I also chose to add more stamps at this point)

(This show my original stamped piece before heating was 4in long)

 Step 4:
       Heat that bad boy up!! Don't panic it will warp, and curl and do all sorts of funny things, but don't panic it will flatten back out on it's own as it heats 
          (i usually leave it laying on my nonstick craft mat while i heat it, i only lifted it for the picture)

 Step 5:
    You did it! Now let it cool for a minute then you are ready to add it to your projects! In my case i made a fun charm dangle clip. (note the new size is only 1 and 3/4 inches!!)

 Here you can see the front and back sides of m charm.

 (note that the metallic marker i used was opaque so it gives a nice 3D affect when compared to the transparent colors)

Well Here you Go my finished Charm Clip! 

It was a dark and stormy ... Day...

Ok well its stormy and gloomy outside. I decided to make a fun stamped hang tag with one of my favorite stamps... He's a crow/man whom i call the "bird man" ... He was originally part of Mary Margaret's personal collection but I fell head over heels in love with him so he now lives with me. :D (the stamp is based off of the art by JJ Grandville, a caricaturist from the 1800's) .

            There are various stamp companies have turned his images into stamps and I know there are at least 4 of them with Viva Las Vegastaps that I also must have!! They are next on my list of stamps to buy! The bird man is created by: silver crow creations... 

   Okay so on with my point... I started to work on a fantastic tag with him and I wanted it to be titled a dark and stormy night to reflect the way the weather has been the last couple of days, and because if you have colored right he can have an awesome your revised to him! Well I hand stamped out each of the words and instead of a dark and stormy night... I ended up titling it... a dark and scary night ...  so my lack of sleep is apparently taking it was going to send me back to the drawing board because I want it to be perfect ... As you can see in the photo preview below it still has a long way to go yet, but I intend on finishing the phone and making it even more eerie ... ( sorry that the photo is not great it is just a quick sneak peek from my phone)

     In other news after going to my eye exam yesterday, I'm officially at 20/20 vision!!!!  on the flip side on the way down there the steering wheel to my car started smoking!? Luckily it did not catch on fire and I only smoked a couple of times. (we made it safely to the appointment and back home). So now we need to make an appointment with mechanic I'm sure that will be fun and expensive.