Tuesday, August 05, 2008

No finished LO yet, but I have been busy...

So a few months ago I mentioned that I had found a fun, cheap and cool way to make embellishments outta something we would have just thrown away anyway!

It all started when I began to notice how much packaging is used on everything!! Especially stiff plastic, thicker than a transparency but still thin enough to be able to cut with scissors. Kids toys come full of this stuff...its' the plastic they use on the front so that the kids can see the toy! The top picture is my daughter's empty packaging and then on the bottom you can see how I just ripped it out. Don't even have to work if there is a little paper stuck on the back side.



After you've gathered your plastic, the real fun begins. The first thing to decide is what kind of "topping" are you going to use. If you are covering with a dense material (sand, microbeads, or dense glitter) then you don't need to alcohol ink or paint the plastic first.

For these hearts I did NOT alcohol ink them first. They all started out like the top 3 and then going from left to right I added red & gold thick glitter, the next one was covered in yellow seed beeds, the third one was given stripes made outta two different colors, and the last heart was covered with colored sand.



For making the shapes I've used plastic templates, stamps, ding bats, or any other thing you have that is not too detailed, so you can still cut it out! For some of these I had colored the alcohol sheet first and then stamped a few things, and also used the negative spaces from chipboard/grungeboard and they work great.

For this first one, I made a cute little elephant from a plastic template that I have had forever and ever!


The top pic is the plain plastic, middle pic is after using Denim, Stream and Silver Alcohol inks along with a bit of blender. The last picture shows the template that I used to cut out my elephant shape.

After cutting out the elephant shape, I covered him with Glossy Accents and then used 2 different shades of glitter until I felt that I had the color I wanted. Let glossy accents dry at least a couple hours...I usually do these late at night and then just let them dry all night.
The chipboard ribbon buckle is bright colors, so I just painted it silver and then sprinkled it with a bit of the same glitter to match the elephant.

And here is the finished card. :)
Well it's already been a long day, so that's all for tonight. I do have some other cards and shapes that I've been playing with so keep your eyes open cause who knows what I'll try to do next! lol