#6 Plastic = Green Shrink Plastic!

Hidy Ho Neighbors!

Hope you had a great day today! 4 day week ;) YEAH!!!

We had an eventful day today...we had hay down ~ long story ~ and the weather man calling for T-storms & rain rain rain so this a.m. dh and I made hay while the sun was a shinin'... after Bob got home he took over my position (driving the tractor) and I came home to get supper going. I was getting terribly worried because it was rumbling in the distance and was growing darker and darker. It started to pour here at home and shortly there after dh & bob pulled in ~ they had made it JUST in time! Had all the hay pulled into the barn, tractors put away when the sky opened up. Perfect timing!

So I have a fun tip to pass along from one of our readers...Cindy Cade :) HI CINDY!!! She has discovered that you can use Krylon's Matte Acrylic Sealer sprayed both horizontal & vertically (2 seperate coats, dry in between) it will allow you to print on the shrink film! Way cool idea!! This is the perfect alternative if you don't want to take the time to sand the shrink plastic before printing :)

Thanks Cindy for sharing with the rest of us!!

Today I have one last shrink plastic technique to share with you all...actually I have a few more but I don't want to bore you so I'll save them for another time. Anyway, today's technique is a "GREEN" as in recycle green technique. We will be using the clear #6 (recycle-able number) type plastic. This is usually lids or food containers like those covering meat/veggie trays, cinnamon roll containers, cookie boxes, etc. It will actually have the recycle symbol with a 6 inside as shown below...

I should warn you before you begin that this type of plastic isn't actually designed for this technique like the actual shrink film/plastic is so you aren't going to get very consistent results. Some will work better than others and it may not shrink the same horizontally as it does vertically or you may even find that one area of the plastic shrinks more than the others (you'll see what I mean later).

Now some people say there are fumes when it's being shrunk but I didn't notice any when I was working with it... I'm not particularly sensitive to it either so you may want to keep that in mind as well when you're working with this material.

#6 Plastic Shrink Fun...

Supplies:

#6 Recyclable Plastic

Rubber Stamps (optional)

Archival Ink (optional)

Scissors or Exacto Knife

Heat Source (heat gun or oven)

Krylon Acrylic Sealer (optional)

Instructions:

Just a note ~ I used the lid pictured above for my example ~ so you can judge size proportions this is from an 8x8 container.

1. Remove any stickers or labels that may be on the plastic.

2. Wash off any residue and let the plastic dry.

3. Cut away the flat section you will be using to stamp on but don't discard the excess plastic.... For this example I cut the center out of the above pictured lid using an exacto knife leaving the outside parameter in tact. When you've got your piece cut out, remember to round the edges so your finished piece isn't sharp.

4. Stamp desired images onto the plastic. Punch hole(s) at this time. I punched the top hole over the #6 so it didn't show up in the finished charm.

5. Heat to shrink ~ you may do so in your oven or with a heat gun. I used the latter. Now this is going to look really wild when it starts to melt. It looks like it gets holes in the plastic but don't worry it will go through the same contortions as the shrink plastic and finish flat. Remember if it gets stuck on it's self during the heating process use a skewer or other implement to unstick it. The plastic will be VERY HOT!!!

And here you go....You will notice how the upper left hand corner is a bit larger than the rest of the charm...that corner for whatever reason didn't shrink as much as the rest of the plastic did.

If you'd like you can spray it with a coat of sealer to protect the image. Turned out pretty cool looking don't 'cha think?

NOW, remember I said don't throw away the excess...here's why....It can be turned into a frame!!!! The ruffles somewhat disappear and the whole thing comes out relatively flat. This is also a good example of it not shrinking the same horizontally & vertically. It started out a square but it is now a 3 1/4" x 4" rectangle.... don't ask me how cause I have no idea but that's part of the fun, you just never know what you will end up with :)

So this is a great alternative when you run out or don't have any shrink plastic available locally!! I hope you give it a try and let us know how it turns out!!