If you’ve never used shrink plastic then you are seriously missing out! It is great fun to play with and once you try it you’ll want to try shrinking all your stamps!  Fiona Haigh-Gannon demonstrates just how easy it is.

You will need:

• Shrink Plastic
• A large stamp
• A Quick drying dye based ink like StazOn
• Coloured pencils or permanent ink pens if you want to colour your image before shrinking.
• Hole punch
• Heat Gun or Oven
• Tweezers

1  Stamp your image onto the rough side of the shrink plastic with StazOn ink and leave it to dry.

2  Colour the image on the rough side if required.

Please note: colours do become darker and stronger when the plastic shrinks.

3  Cut around your image leaving a small border all the way around.

4  If you are making a tag or shrinking the plastic to use as a key ring or piece of jewellery then punch a hole in your image before you shrink it but bear in mind the hole will shrink too!

5  Now for the fun part! Place your shrink plastic image on a heat resistant surface and heat with your heat gun.

Please note: you may need to use tweezers to stop the image from blowing away. It will curl and twist but eventually will lie flat.

6  Quickly place an acrylic block or back of a wood mounted stamp over the image while it is still warm, this will help it to set flat.

7  Once cooled you can use it on your project.

Please note: if you don’t have a heat gun you can heat your shrink plastic in the oven using the instructions below.

1. Pre-heat oven to 1750C (3500F) Gas Mark 3.
2. Put the shrink plastic image on a baking tray lined with tinfoil.
3. Use an oven glove to put it in the oven for a few minutes.
4. Remove the shrink plastic from the oven and place it on a work top and immediately flatten it with an acrylic block or back of a stamp.  After a few moments it will set hard.  If it is not still pliable, do not press it flat, just re-heat it and try again.
5. Sometimes the image will curl up and stick to itself.  If this happens it usually means that the heat gun is too close or the oven is too hot.  You can usually get it unstuck by pulling it apart with some tweezers then continue to heat until its flat.

If you give this technique a try and would like to be featured on our Blog, please email your submissions to: submissions@papercraftjunkies.com

Tags | acrylic block, black permanent pens, coloured pencils, Fiona Haigh-Gannon, heat gun, heat resistant surface, hole punch, jewellery, shrink plastic, stamp, StazOn ink pad, tweezers, wood mounted stamp