Charming!!

Hi Blogland... God, it's cold out there this morning, minus 3 degrees... Still, should be another nice sunny day today!
Today is another post for the Cuttlebug Spot. As you may be aware this Month we are sharing with you projects using embellishments. Last week it was Hat Pins and this week we are being oh so charming with you and using Charms.. Doh!!I must admit I struggled a little with this one.. We have pretty much everything else here atPinnacles! But do you think I could find a Charm!! So, I decided to make my own with some Shrink Plastic...I started off by cutting out some Sunflower shapes in Shrink Plastic from the Stretch Your Imagination Cartridge using my Cricut Machine.Before doing anything else I punched a hole into the Shrink Plastic with my Eyelet Setter. I say do this now as I nearly always forget to do this before I have shrunk the plastic and by then, it's too late!!I used a frosted Shrink Plastic, which has a smooth side and a rough side. The rough side is ideal for stamping an image on and then shrinking it. It is also ideal for holding colour. So I coloured the image in using some Copic Pens.I then popped the image in a box and heated it up with my Heat Tool.If you give this technique a try, don't panic!! Just let the image shrink with the heat.. Shrink Plastic generally shrinks to a 7th of it's size.Also any colouring will generally intensify by a 7th,so lighter colours will become darker... Cool eh!!?I then embossed a piece of White card stock with the Autumn Sunflower Set (656653) from Sizzix.Although it's an Autumnal image I decided to matt and layer it with some Springtime coloured card stock.Adding some pre made flowers and some leaves I had punched out using the Martha Stewart Frond Punch.Adding my Charm Embellishments with some cord threaded through those holes I remembered to punch out before the images were shrunk. The hole will also shrink by about a 7th, so make sure you punch a big enough hole to start off with.And there you go.. A bit of a Spring/Autumn mix, but a bright an cheery card non the less... Don't forget to pop on over to the Cuttlebug Spot to see what my fellow Design Team Members have come up with, or visit their individual Blogs for some great inspiration... Links to their Blogs can be found at the top of my Blog on the Right!
Have a great day, and thanks for checking us out..
@ndy.

More shrinking

Hi Everyone, as promised here is another Shrink Plastic card, this time with a Christmas theme.
It's been great re visiting an old technique this week.. But the Shrink Plastic will be put away until another time as we move onto yet another technique in our lessons next week, oh by the way our new lesson sheets are now available and take us right up to the end of the year.

I love this Poinsettia stamp, it has soooo much potential and I love the fact that even as a one dimensional shape none of it's detail is lost..
I stamped it out three times onto the rough side of some White Shrink Plastic using Black Stazon Ink. I then coloured it in using Derwent Watercolour Pencils.

The images were then cut out and heated with a heat gun to shrink them. Take a look at my previous post for tops tips on how to do this...

As I like to join in with the lesson (if I can and there is space,, not always the case.. standing room only for me last night!!!) I have ended up with quite a few cards with all the same elements, but just by changing the layout of the card brings a different pespective to the whole concept..

So, why not give it a go?..
Have a great weekend everyone, and if you are comig to the Essex Country show see you there..
Pinnacles..

Hunny, I shrunk the card!!!

Hey everyone, First of all We'd all just like to say a Great BIG THANK YOU to everyone who came to our Birthday sale day on Saturday, Thank you also for all the cards and best wishes for our 6th Birthday, A special thanks also to Toni & Kristy for our balloon. Everyone should have a balloon on their Birthday I think!!! and it is defo a good one as after Three days it is still floating... So thank you one and all. We hope you all enjoy your bargain purchases.. You certainly cleared us out!!!

Today, I'd like to share some cards we have prepared for our Shrink Plastic lesson this week.. I Have had so much fun preparing these. I hope you enjoy them and they give you some inspiration to try this great technique for yourselves...

Firstly, I stamped my images out using StazOn Black Ink. Two images were stamped onto White Shrink Plastic. I used the rough side as I intend to colour them in. Stamping on the glossy side would not hold the colour and would potentially come off. If I was not going to colour the image then I would probably stamp onto the glossy side. The third image was just stamped onto some White card stock. The Image is from the Popcorn Bear range from Crafters' Companion.
I coloured the images in using Derwent Watercolour pencils, which are available in the shop. As I wasn't sure which images I was going to use I decided to colour everything in and then decide afterwards...
Once coloured, I cut out the Bears and Ducks from the Shrink Plastic, at this stage I decided to loose the Golf Clubs....

Lining up the images I then thought that the Ducks were not working for me so I put them to one side for another project.
So with my Two Shrink Plastic images ready to be shrunk, I placed them in a small box and shrunk them one at a time with a heat gun.. I have done this quite a few times over the years and it can potentially be a hit or miss technique.. However my preferred method of shrinking the images is to use the slower heat setting on my heat gun. I also start heating in the middle of the image, as this shrinks, it means the corners don't tend to roll over on themselves and stick to each other. Once shrunk, I flattened the image with an acrylic stamping block..

I then cut out 2 balloon images in Shrink Plastic and One image in White card stock from the Celebrations Cartridge from the Cricut machine. These images were cut out at 2" in size.. I used the Multicut function when cutting the Shrink Plastic to make sure it cut through..
Again these were coloured with Derwent Watercolour pencils

and the Two Shrink Plastic images were shrunk as I did with the Bear images..

Once all the cutting, colouring and shrinking had been done I found some great card stock from Kanban which suited the images perfectly...

I also found one for the ducks as well!!!

Later in the week I will show you a Christmas version, so thanks for stopping by and don't forget to check back..
Pinnacles....