Not just for children!

I promised you more cards inspired by the classes I recently took.  This isn't water colour, but it is SO much fun.  In the Holiday class, Dave Brethauer showed us how to use images stamped and coloured onto 'Shrinkies' as embellishments for our cards.  Look how wonderful my butterfly looks!  Don't tell my children, but the shrinkie paper has just moved into my craft cupboard.

Here's how you do it:

    1.  Using fine sand paper sand down one surface of the Shrinkie paper, you want a uniformly rough surface

    2.  Stamp your image - I used the beautiful Hero Arts butterfly I used in yesterday's posting and Memento ink

    3.  Using pencil crayons, colour your image

    4.  Cut it out, if you want a hole in the final image punch it now - at least 1/4 inch, as the hole will shrink too.

    5.  The fun part - Put a sheet of kitchen paper on a heat proof surface, put a roll of packaging tape on top and place the stamped image in the hole.  Using an embossing heat gun, heat the image.  It will jumped around curl up into a ball, but don't try and hold it down and keep heating, suddenly it will flatten out into a tiny butterfly.  When it stops shrinking, stop heating.

    6.  Pick up the now tiny image and marvel at how clever you are!

To complete the card I heat embossed a white wreath (Hero Arts) onto some beautiful teal card which has a slight shimmer to it, and used the McGill label punch to provide a basis for my sentiment (Amuse).

I was having way too much fun with the Shrinkies, so I made a second card using a large blossom stamp from Hero Arts.  Look how tiny it became, virtually the same as the tiny blossom that languished, unused in my stamp drawer.  A few scraps of card and ribbon, and a sentiment from Amuse complete the card.

Thanks for looking in, tomorrow I'll have some watercolour cards to share with you.