Hello and welcome to another Stampendous video. My name is Fran Seifert and I'm the president
and designer of Stampendous Rubber Stamps. What I'm really excited to show you today
is how you can use your rubber stamps on Shrinky Dink plastic. Let me show you. In the first
sample you can see a little pin that we've made with a set of matching earrings. You can also
do a little charm that will hang on a necklace like this one. Or up here, this little tea cup
pin has beads and little dangle designs on it as well. You can go rather three-dimensional
like this sample and create cutout pieces and layers. On this little barrette, the Shrinky
Dink part is the charm in the middle and we've added ribbons and lace and you can see how that
makes a beautiful little hair barrette. You can make a bookmark with several layers to it and add
ribbons. You can make a little frame for miniature photographs of the kids and you could take it off
the card and hang it on the Christmas tree if you wanted to. In this one we made a key chain and we
actually rolled the plastic material and created special little messages that you can personalize.
And in this cute little sample we actually have a picture of Mona Gettman and I'll mention at this
point I just wanted to give a very special thanks to her for all her hard work of making the beautiful
samples that you see on the video today. On this one we have a napkin ring holder and we were
actually able to curve the plastic a little bit. This is a luggage tag and it's very durable and
permanent so it's not likely to get your luggage lost anywhere down the road. This is a little
game piece where we've made little tic-tac-toe pieces and they can be moved around on the card.
And then this one is a combination of creating a card for a special friend and making a pin that
gets attached to the card but can be removed and you can see the little tic-tac backing on it so
it can be sent in an envelope and enjoyed as both a card and a gift. And there's more, take a look
over here. On this side you can see that we created a cute little charm necklace with the
name on it for our teddy bear and next to that we have a little pet tag that we created. You can
make little top pieces to decorate your cupcakes or birthday cakes for the kids and moving up you
can see the top of this cute little pansy plant here. We have a little plant marker and another
version back here for your herbs. You can even make something suitable for framing. You can see
in this one right here. Okay and here's even a few more, take a look. This one here has a little bib
where we stamped a plaid and added another level to it with a little cherished Teddy's baby and the
one next to it is a little plant decorator for a basket of little garden things. Okay and now I've
got a project that we're going to go through step by step and you can see how simple it is. This
little heart-shaped pin is a button cover just like the ones I'm wearing on my shirt today and
this is what we're going to do first. Before we begin let me show you the different materials that
we have to stamp on. I've got in front of me here a couple of different packages of the Shrinky Dinks
and one is bright white, another one is antique ivory, and the third one is frosted rough and ready
which is actually pre-sanded already and you'll be happy to notice that the packages show you a
close-up with some how-to instructions and there's a little bit more of a brief sequence of directions
on the back of the package that'll be a nice reminder for you. And so the project that we're
going to do now is using the antique ivory and the first thing that I'll need to do with this is to
sand it and there's a couple of different choices. You do want a fine grain sandpaper and you can use
some of the little blocks like this or put it onto a handle like this one and the object will
be to give some even sanding in a crisscross pattern across the whole sheet. That's the easiest
and I can kind of move both directions and if you look at an angle you can kind of see the pattern
it's creating to make sure you're getting an even coverage. Okay so now I can take my stamp and I'm
going to use this heart-shaped stamp and my Fabrico pad which although it's intended for fabric stamping
really can be used for a lot of other crafts as well and the easiest way will be to simply hold
the pad turn it over and begin pressing it onto the stamp. I'm going to move a little bit from left
to right following the striping of it and make sure I have ink all the way down to the bottom
part of the stamp. So once it's fully inked I can position it on the corner of my sheet,
make a nice firm impression and I'll mention at this point that the ink will not dry without heat
so I'll work carefully with it to do any cutting or punching at this stage and I can go all the
way around the edge. Create my heart shape here. You can cut up close to the edge or give a lacy
margin all the way around. Okay and now we'll begin heating it which both shrinks the plastic
and makes the ink permanent. So I'm going to use the end of my paintbrush just to hang on to it a
little bit as we begin to heat the plastic.
Always a little bit scary as it curls and turns around on you but I use the block just to flatten
it again as I got to the last stage and there you have the finished piece. So you'll see that
this size ends up about a third of the original size because here's the stamp here and if I were
to measure the stamp across a three inch dimension here would end up about a one inch here in the
finished shrunk size and it's also nine times thicker so you have a very permanent and lightweight
finished piece that will make a beautiful jewelry pin. So the next stage would be to take any of the
different kinds of findings that you would like whether it's magnets or pin backings or in this
case a button cover and it takes an industrial strength glue. This one is E6000 and you could
look for other ones in your craft store that would be intended for jewelry and you can apply
some of the glue if it helps with the toothpick into the middle area. If you find you have trouble
with the attachments sticking you could sand a little bit on the back of the piece at this point
but I'll put it in the center and give it some time to dry and as a finishing step to it you
could use any different types of sealant a spray sealant of some kind would be helpful and you can
spray the surface to add a special finish to it. For this project we're going to use the bright white
Shrinky Dink plastic and I'll begin by using my Birdhouse stamp and my Fabrico green and I'm
going to do two layers so the first thing I'm going to do is only do the nest area that's in
the foreground and stamp it on my Shrinky Dink. I've already sanded this just to save time but a
reminder that you'll need to do that. You can stamp it once down there and I'm going to trim
it away part of it now I'll go back and completely ink all of it and stamp it again. This stamp is
so new it doesn't even have a decal on it yet. Okay with my regular scissors I can now go back
and cut away first this area of my nest. Be sure to save all of the extra pieces on your sheet
because you can always use them for smaller designs and images later. Okay I'm going to
place this piece on a piece of blue paper just to handle it. Remember the ink is still a bit
wet but you can hold it on the edges enough to get it trimmed. Okay I have in this case instead
of using the heat tool I'm going to show how we use the small oven and I've got it on already at
about 350 and by placing my pieces on the paper I can easily get them in the oven. Slide it
in there and it's going to take about two minutes so while it's shrinking in there I'll show you a
couple of samples of what's coming next. It's beginning to curl all up and you kind of just
have to leave it to do its thing it does begin to flatten back out again somehow that's always the
scariest part about shrinking but it's easier to control in the toaster oven but if you can take
a close-up look I've got a whole series of pieces here you may want to do black only and leave it
finished just like that or in this other one I did kind of just a monochromatic blues or you can
go to full color with this flower cart. In this one this is one of the new lighthouse stamps
and we've got little wired pieces with the seagulls on it if you can see how they're attached
simply on the back. Next take a look at this one it has some layers to it with all of the roses
and this one we really went to town and built up several stack of layers on the fruit design
and now let's check the oven and see how it's doing over here. I'll pull it out and they're just a
little bit curled here I'll just take my stamp and flatten it one last bit and pull them off.
This worked quite well and you can be doing other things while it's heating.
Okay so now what I'd like to show you is how simple it is to color it when it's this tiny
and I'm going to use basically my color pencils that work with water to create beautiful little
watercolors and when you're doing it in miniature it's just a matter of minutes. There's a couple
of different ways to apply color using these color pencils one is to get your brush wet and apply it
directly to the pencil tip and then to the plastic. You can get very light washes or stronger color
by how much you apply and another method would be to take another color like the blue and color right on
the plastic itself and using the wet brush afterwards allows you to move it around and blend
it a little bit more or you can dip the pencil tip itself into the water so that it's wet to start with
and lift it with your brush. You can see a very vivid magenta color on that one just clean your
brush between each time when you're changing colors to keep your colors crisp and in this case
where I'm going to put this small piece on top I really don't need to color the underneath part
but I can apply my tan colors on the nest.
Add a little bit more color on the flowers and some greens
add a little bit more color on the flowers and some greens
it's really very simple and remember there's no right or wrong way to do it.
You can color them differently every time
add some more yellow
this will be a place where if you haven't sanded enough you'll notice that the color will not
adhere so it's important to have done that pre-sanding.
Okay so at this stage you can take the small piece and glue it onto the other one to create the
three-dimensional effect and I'd like to show you another comparison here as well. You can see in
this sample that in the first one here at the top I used a permanent black ink that dried by itself
and then I colored it with color pencils and shrunk it and you can see how the colors intensified
to this degree whereas the same piece stamping it with the Fabrico pad and waiting to watercolor
it afterwards allows me to keep the pastels on this sample. So since this was a precious moments
one actually I'll show you another variation here. In this sample you can see we've used one of the
new chapel etchling windows and when it's stamped on the frosted I've actually stamped on the frost
side and I'll color from that side from the other side it's glossy and I'll do a watercolor on it
and position it on the opaque piece as you see here for a little jewelry pin.
You will be amazed at how many of the stamp accessories that you may already have will work very well
with your shrink art. So to make sure you don't forget any of them let me give you an overview
and a number of suggestions. Let me start here with some of the different craft punches and you can use
craft punches of virtually every size and shape and the decorative scissors and any of these will cut
through the shrink plastic very easily before it's heated and you can see how the positive shapes of the
flower like this one will create beautiful little earrings or even the negative shape of a snowflake
will create a beautiful background to this piece as we did on the necklace and the decorative corners
are very fun. These scissors allow you to slide your material into the slot and create all different
patterns that when they shrink and reduce are even more interesting sometimes and you can always add
other little punches as well. One of the fun new things that we have available is this circle cutter
and by the design of it it's very easy to use and I wanted to make sure and explain how if you hold it
upside down you can measure from the center line to the blade position which can be moved. If you
measure an inch and a half from here to here that will give you a three inch circle when you cut it
and remember that will shrink down to about a one inch size button so you work on top of the glass
counter and by holding the handle in place you simply swing the arm of the cutter a full circle
to cut a circular shape that's very smooth edges. So I've done a little sample here where in addition
to the punches and scissors I really enjoy using the decorative chalks and you can see the beautiful
color palette and one reminder is that if you apply color with your fingers or with a sponge keep it
very light and simply brush it on so that when it's heated the colors intensify and it will end up
looking more like this. But another fun thing you can do with it at that stage is that you can add
images that are stamped full size to the pre-shrunk piece. For example these are some of our new
nestling stamps that are borders and little miniature wildflowers and they still work quite nicely
on this size and in this one I used the Funcube inks and then dusted it with the copper embossing
powder and when that's heated it won't hurt the first application of the heat for shrinking it
and now it will just give you a raised permanent impression on the pin. You can combine sizes that
way of the shrunk image as well as the full size one and if you don't want to actually emboss it
you can use the Fabrico inks and just be sure and heat them again so that it sets the color.
Next I want to show you how we made a pin with movable feet. You can take a closer look you'll see
how we used this Santa stamp and we stamped it a couple of times on the plastic using different
pieces to create some layers. So if you can take a close look you can see how this layer when it's
moved away shows the backing piece and the little feet. We've punched and threaded them together
and when I secure them together with the foam tape then the feet will freely move back and forth
like that. Another fun thing that you can do is that all of the scrap pieces that you have left
can be melted down into some sort of an abstract piece like this one and once you've heated it you
can dust it with embossing powder like the vertigris that was used on this one. Add other kinds of
rhinestones or even charms of different kinds could be very interesting and all of this will add to
your creative finished piece. Also any kind of polymer or plastic clays can be very interesting.
On this patterned one we created a whole little decorative box. Using the shrink art piece with
the horses in the middle we then used braid and other little sliced pattern pieces to create a box
lid. Another option that you have as well is that when you first heat the plastic and pull it out
for a couple of seconds it's very formable and I've actually rolled it over the curve of a mug on
here or other objects to create a curve or in this case an actual 90 degree bend to the piece by just
quickly bending it over the edge of the stamp. Another option would be creating a separate stand
and I started with a piece like this that when it was shrunk created the little tiny piece that allows
the two pieces to be slotted together and create a little game piece or other little stand up image.
You can also create a completely circular bead by taking a piece this size to start with and rolling
it around the stylus or other doweling and create decorative beads that can then be strung together
in a number of different ways like this key chain and on this one before it was rolled we did all of
the stamping with the different alphabet sets and there's any number of different alphabet sets that
will allow you to personalize and put names or special words and messages on your shrink art.
Here was an interesting little plant signage like these two and for that matter a whole little
necklace here had heart shaped letters to spell out a name. If you create a paper pattern for the
shape you're using in the shrink art it will help you duplicate the project again if you're happy with
it. For example our heart cards this size created the little pin here that we curved in the last
moment and also this shape here you can see the megaphone paper shape that created this pin for
the cheerleaders. This little bib pattern up here as well you can see the ratio again of large to
small and on this one we use the texture cubes which we've had for a while but they make beautiful
background patterning and you can begin with one color work across the whole area and then with a
different color ink add the second color going a different direction and get some beautiful
textures. Other options come from all of the different stencil patterns that you could use.
For example you can take any of the Fabrico pads and sponge directly through the stencil or using
sponges and the pattern that is large here becomes very detailed. This is a heart shaped one that we
used on the little bookmark that you see here and remember how much darker the colors get so keep
your sponging very light but here's another stencil pattern that again created the frame around the
picture and again from the etchling series was the photograph print edge on this card.
Your shrink art can be beautifully displayed on any number of different style of cards or little
stand-up cards like this teacup set but here you get to see the contrast between the original size
and the little shrinks size charms that are on the bracelet or this style I would refer to as a
matchbook style where you can make a little piece that wraps around and when you see it out flat it
consists of two pieces one folded like this and a second piece that's just a small one and I've cut
some little round holes and a straight slot so that the pin backing can punch right through into
the card and this card would then get positioned inside the other one simply staple there to hold
it together and you can put a charm or something to cover the staple and you have a flap that comes
down to protect your little shrink art piece. In addition to that you can enjoy a lot of wonderful
things using foils and with several of the brush on adhesives simply apply it wherever you want to
add an accent and let the adhesive dry until it's just tacky some of this has some foil on it already
using the Mardi Gras pattern and another area has a bit of adhesive on the candles and I can come back
and press the gold down wherever there's adhesive it will stick lift away the foil and now you've got
shiny little candle lights on there. Another fun application that you can do is the flocking which
are simply fibers that come in all different colors and when you apply a glue like this onto the
surface dust it with the fibers you can see how just they're loose very fine fuzzy little pieces in
there it will give you a finish that actually is soft and fuzzy to touch like we've done on the bird
on this little card and another reminder is that with any of your pieces like we did with the little
pet collar we used the frosted material on this one and we added color on the back and this was just
using acrylics in this case after we did the shrinking you can do an edge or the backing of any different
shrink art pieces for a variety of other pigments and inks. Next I want to point out how you can use
the new Stampaflex stamps which are very large images and they're in this sort of a package with some
explanation on the back but the jumbo size of them although they're intended for craft and home
decorating they do happen to shrink very well to a very nice size for jewelry for example this rose
pattern here created this small rose and there's a second piece that creates the darker shadows for
the definition of the flower and the different leaves as well can be used in layers to create a
beautiful pin again using primarily the Fabrico pads gives you quite a variety of colors that you
can do some shading even between a couple of colors this card for example was also made using the bird
houses from another set and the bird house and the little bird were layered together and even this
little piece that you could hang on your wall was created using the same images. So have I given you
enough ideas to get you excited to start shrinking things? I hope so. Shrink art really is a wonderful
way to use any of your Stampendous rubber stamps and it makes such beautiful miniatures that are so
detailed very permanent lightweight and they really do make wonderful gifts for your friends. So thank
you for watching today and my name is Fran Siepher and I'll see you on our next video. So until then
happy stamping!