Tuesday Tips and Technique: Shrinky Dink bracelet

Hi Stickle fans!!!  Chas here and like I promised during the Surf, Sun and Stickle blog hop, here I am to show you how I made the shrinky dink bracelet.

Since it was a summer blog hop, I know right away that I wanted to use my Life's a Beach cricut cartridge. Luckily for me that cartridge had a charm setting on it so that was perfect for my bracelet.

I used the two inch size for my charms.

The plastic cut like butter as long as the mat was sticky.  No problems what's so ever.

After I had my shapes cut out, I used my permanent makers to color them, actually my daughter did the coloring.  I tried to use the stampin up ink markers but it rubbed off the plastic.  I'm not sure if copic would work since I don't have any.  One thing to remember is the color will be a lot darker once the plastic is shrunk down.

I tried putting stickles on first but that did not work out. Plus you use a lot more of the stickles before you shrink compared to after.

One of the main things to remember if you are making necklaces or bracelets.  Make sure you use a hole punch before you shrink it.

I used my heat gun.  It only took a few seconds to shrink it down.  But be careful of your fingers.  I used a paper clip to hold the plastic in place.

Here is the after picture.

See how much darker the color is on the charm.

Next is the fun part.  But shrinking was really fun but hey this is a stickle blog.  :)  I used golden rod for the outside of my charm.

After it's all dry, just get out your favorite beads and make that piece of jewelry that you want.  One think that I did not think of when I was making my bracelet, was to use jump rings for the charms.  They would not lay flat like I wanted to.  But I think the bracelet turned out really good for the first time.

 

 My daughter and her friends are making a My Little Pony bracelet for when we go to Bronycon this weekend.  Check out my blog  Scrapin Lizards,  to see their creations.

Tips & Techinque Thursday: Masking & Outlining

Happy Thursday! 

 Tonya here with another great technique/tutorial for you. I wanted to make something with some fun, light colors because I am SO tired of winter.  And I love to use different techniques in the same project.  So, I thought I'd try my hand at making a background for a card, with Stickles!

  

I used a Scraptastical Kreations file to create a mask for the base of the background.  I chose to use the bow from A Geeky Kind of Love file.  I made an offset of the shape.  (I originally had the idea of the bow shape, but the offset shape resembles more of a butterfly.)  :-)     

I positioned the 'bows' on white carstock where I thought they would work the best. 

I chose five colors of distress inks to use. 

Using an inking tool, I applied the distress inks directly to, and around, the die cuts

causing a shadow of color.

Here they are all colored. 

  

I tried to chose Stickles colors that closely matchd the distress inks themselves.   

  

After removing the masks, I outlined the inside of each shadow with the Stickles.   

 

  

First look, I wasn't happy with a specific section, or grouping of colors, to use on the front of my card. 

I decided to cut the sheets into three pieces -one piece for the front and two for the inside.   

  

Here's my finished card.  I love how the colors and the Stickles pop out.  The digi I used is from The Paper Nest  that I colored with Copics. And I added a touch of Stickles to her beads and to the roses adorning her hat.  The sentiment is from Whimsical Designs.

(Inside of card)

I LOVE how this card turned out.  It's so fun and it just makes me smile.  We would love to see what techiques you come up with for Stickles on your creations.

Be sure to link up at our party HERE