Shrink Plastic Keyring

If you saw my last post you may remember that I have made myself a list of lots of art techniques that I am going to have a go at as part of my 'Now' List.  When I wrote the list I just wrote lots of techniques down one after another, without really thinking about any sort of priority. The main criteria I gave myself was that I must already have the equipment to do it with.  When I came to do the list I considered picking and choosing what I fancied doing but then I decided that was kind of cheating because I would probably never end up doing the trickier choices.  So, I am going to faithfully go down the list and do every one as it comes, even if it's difficult and one that I would normally avoid.  My first technique, shown on my last blog post, was Lino printing and the next on the list was to make something with Shrink Plastic.

This is what I made:

I have a travel art bag (shown in detail in this blog post) so this would be ideal to add to the zip pull.

This art equipment keyring wasn't what I planned when I first got out the shrink plastic. That was to colour my none-art equipment themed shrink plasticables (made up word) with alcohol inks.    

The first theme I had was made up monster-y characters that I had drawn in my sketchbook many moons ago.

On the left are the pictures that were traced on to the clear shrink plastic with a fine black Sharpie.

I poured various colours of alcohol ink onto a craft mat and smooched the cut out plastic monsters in it.  Mixing colours I thought would add interest... but when they came out from the oven...

...I didn't like the result and was going off the idea of monsters anyway.  Where would I put them..?

So, I found myself a children's vintage craft book, called '365 Games to Make & Play' (from 1979!) and spotted these stationery images on the opening pages:

...which were perfect for tracing and shrinking.  A tip I remembered reading on Pinterest was to sand the back of the shrink plastic before colouring, and for this I used an emery board.  I also punched out a hole in  each piece, before cooking, with my Crop-a-dile.

The stationery/arty items were coloured with Sharpies and the very bright monster-y characters shown here on the right with Neon Pro-makers:

As I didn't have lots of small rings to place my individual items on I just threaded them onto one jump ring and added a keyring.

..And another 'Now' art technique can be crossed off the list, what's next?...(checks list)...Hama Beads....

See you next time, thanks for stopping by,

Nicky

Creative Flourishes