Monday 1 July 2013

Experimenting with Shrinkable Plastic for a knockout neckpiece

A crafty friend set me a challenge to help her with a neckpiece for Supernova.


She sent me through an illustrator file with ZZAP on it, but I wanted to try some other ideas. My groovy Year 11 class provided me with some ideas;  Splosh, Gooey, Kaboom, Crash, Crack, Splat, Vroom, Bam, Sock.



Biggest challenge with shrinkable plastic is to understand the shrinking characteristics of the plastic. Do what the instructions say, make a ruler, understand how it shrinks. Also to understand colours, make a graduated colour sampler with RGB or CYMK listed so that you can understand how the colour changes when you shrink it.

For example, below are a few shrinkable neck pieces done on inkjet. The colours look washed out, but when you actually shrink them the colour intensifies.


As you can see the colours become richer and more vibrant.

After they have cooled down, coat them in Diamond Glaze or Modge Podge Dimensional to give them a more luxurious feel. I prefer to drill my holes in after I have shrunk the plastic, so that they are nice and neat.


My daughter has also had a ball with shrinkable plastic. Experimenting, playing with colours and making her own pendants and brooches. Great holiday fun!

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