the hybrid chick

Remember shrinky dinks?  I do!  I loved coloring the little images and then waiting by the stove as my mom baked up a fresh batch of plastic!  LOL!  Guess what, that stuff is still around and it just as fun as an adult as it was as a kid.  Be the coolest parent on the block today and show the neighborhood kids what shrink plastic is all about!

Now I KNOW you have a digital kit or two *wink* and, combined with shrink plastic made especially for ink jet printers, we can print out and have custom embellishments for our hybrid projects in seconds!

 

First some supplies:

Grafix Ink Jet Shrink Film

Digital kits from The Digichick Boutique:

Where your Heart Is by Jan Hosford

Beginnings by Kelley Mickus

Every Life has A Story Ch. 1

Tools: scissors, hole punch, punches, heat gun

 

I printed out different images to test with my tools.  All tools pictured will work to cut or punch the shrink film.

You will want to remember to punch a hole in anything you need holes in (to make a charm or a button, etc) BEFORE you shrink the image.  Remember that everything reduces by 50% or more so start over-sized and anticipate that it will get smaller.  I have hand written digital image sizes on the sheet for reference.

 

 

 

 

Let’s shrink, shall we?

There are oven baking instructions on the shrink film package, but, if you have a heat gun in your bag of tools, I highly recommend it.  I like being able to individually control the shrinking of each item.  I also use a metal tool to hold my shrink film in place while I melt it.  Be sure to use a heat safe surface for this task.

Keep a flat bottomed water glass handy to set on the shrunken embellishment once heating is complete to flatten the image out.  Or, if you want your item to have curve to it, you have a few seconds to shape it once it is melted to its final size.  Handle carefully as it will be quite hot.

A before and after shot.  This is also a good time to note that it is a good idea to leave yourself room for trial and error when working with shrink plastic.  As you can see, my red clock is a bit on the lopsided side of things and I also held my heat gun a little close and scorched my clock!  That in mind, heat your item from the back side and keep your heat gun approximately4-6″inches from the item while moving it continuously. 

My happy little bits and pieces!  Let’s put a couple right to work…

The heart button tied with real embroidery floss and the new custom house embellishment look great paired with a digital background using papers and elements from Where the Heart Is and a fence line punch from Martha Stewart.

I hope you had fun seeing one way to take your digital elements and papers to another level…literally!  Thanks so much for stopping by the Hybrid Chick today!

Other Articles by DanaGustafson:

• The icing on the cake... - September 18th, 2009
• Gift Tags Galore! - September 9th, 2009
• Paper Tussy Mussy - August 21st, 2009
• It's School Time! {Altered clipboards} - July 17th, 2009
• You're WILD, baby! baby card and gift box - June 26th, 2009