Sunday 31 July 2011

A Little Journey

I'm going to take you on a little journey.....this was an idea I had during my Journaling class last week. I had been using one of Tim Holtz dies, the "Journey" Movers & Shapers die as a stencil. I had cut it out of acetate and sponged Pan Pastels through it and then my little mind starts on a journey!!! Wonder what this would look like in shrink plastic???? Pretty good in my head but it turned out more than pretty good...I LOVE IT!!!!

So here's a quick run through of how this tag came together. First of all I covered the whole tag with Wild Honey Distress Ink, then used Forest Moss to stamp some background images. Now I kinda like using just parts of a stamp and to do this I use the stamp without an acrylic block. That way you can bend the stamp and just prints bits of an image....tis fun......give it a whirl....you'll love it!!
Hopefully from this picture, you can see how I bend the stamp.    
Blogger is now officially driving me completely round the hat rack, if I managed to finish this post before screaming, it will be a miracle!! It is changing my font, it's putting my photographs in places that I don't want them, it will not let me insert text where I want it so fingers crossed you guys will be able to make sense of the rest!! What I was trying to tell you is that I cut out some tickets from Tim's Tissue Tape, tinted them with some Distress ink before adding them to my background. Now for the shrink plastic........I am sorry that this is one giant paragraph, but blogger seems to think that if you hit carriage return, it means jumping up two lines.....what's going on?????? Anyway........as I was saying.......you need a Sizzix base tray, your die and some shrink plastic, I've got translucent shrink here.         





Place your magnetic die on the base tray, pop on the shrink plastic, sandwich the whole thing between the two acrylic plates and put through your die cutting machine. I like to leave a nice size border at this stage, so that I can trim it more accurately once it has been die cut.

Now for the shrinking. I like to use something made of wood to stop the shrink plastic flying off the desk, shrink plastic usually shrinks down to about a quarter of it's original size and also becomes thicker once it has been shrunk.
Whilst the shrink plastic was still WARM not HOT.....please be careful if you do this....I know I have asbestos fingers....the shrink can stay HOT for some time.....you can manipulate its shape
You can colour it beautifully with Alcohol Ink. I started out by using Pesto and Caramel but by the time I had finished, it was the same colour as my tag and sort of disappeared so I added some Silver Mixative and Black Alcohol Ink after I had taken my photos.....much better!!!
So here is the finished tag
How much mess can a girl make......I only made a tag!!!
As the theme was journey, I decided that Tim's aeroplane would be quite fitting for this tag
I added a bottlecap with a Paris sticker....still trying to stick to the theme! Some Ideaology finished it off a treat.
So now I'm going back to the journaling class where I first started this journey and you can see that I used a shrunken journey as a stencil in my journal page, so it has a lot of uses.


Hope you managed to follow my drift and enjoyed what turned out to be an epic journey instead of a little trip and let's hope that blogger is in a better mood next time.

15 comments:

Talking Horses Arts said...

Yummie,love it. Thanks for the walk throe love that too, awesome. thanks for sharing!

Helen said...

Oh wow, Lin, this tag is totally fantastic! I love the journey in shrink - what a great idea. it has also made me change my mind about that stamp set - maybe I do need it after all.... lol.

kjjc said...

this is fantastic and tempts me to buy things i swore I never would. Oh heck the bank manager is gonna get so cross.

Suze Bain said...

This is fab. Love your tip on curving the stamp and your use of the shrink plastic. I'll definitely have to dig mine out and try it with the alcohol inks. Thanks for great inspiration. xx

SmilynStef said...

Glad I'm not the only one whose work space looks like a bomb went off when she's done creating ... love all of the wonderful dimension and detail ... especially the bottle cap.

Anonymous said...

Well -- the Queen of Shrink Plastic is back! I wish I could show everyone my treasured piece of woven shrink Linda gave me quite a few years ago. This is such a great idea with a gorgeous result. My guru has been doing her magic!!! Thanks for showing us a lovely project.
Greetings to everyone from France -- Sally
stampsally@yahoo.fr

Karin said...

Oh WOW!! That is brilliant, I love the idea of cutting those dies in shrink and manipulating them. Loving these.

Carmen said...

Really great idea! Yes, blogger can be hard to get along with...even after touching things up in html!

Daniele said...

fabbie tag Lin, great way of getting lots of stamps on the background will def. try that, still not played with shrink plastic since the last class you make it look real easy but that stuff has a mind of its own....lol
hugs

Alison Horne said...

Love your tag and love The 'Chaos of Creation' on your desk.
Alison x.

Debby said...

Beautiful! Love the tag and the journal page. Now I guess I need that die!

Kath Stewart said...

wow wow wow...I can't find enough time to keep up with all your fab creations..I have a list of things I must try as long as my arm.
Regarding your blog problems..have you tried using Google Chrome and Live Writer...might just save you tearing all your hair out...hugs kath xxx

Debbie said...

Gorgeous travel pieces! Awesome! Love the tutorial. I have never used shrink plastic. Must give it a go!

MD said...

waouh fabuleux

Karen said...

Gorgeous tag!
Love the idea of using the words with shrink plastic - Thanks for sharing yet another gem!
Karen