Blog-tember
Saturday, Sept. 24: Recreate an outfit or a project from another blogger. Be sure to link back to the source!
My niece Amber and I tried shrinking plastic. We had a blast. I used the plastic containers saved from the local grocery store salad bar and my stash of sharpies.
The idea came from a couple of YouTube videos. View them here and here.
Amber made a walking dead logo, a planet, sun and stars, and a flower. I stuck with quilt blocks. The youtube videos use a toaster oven. I don’t own one, so we used my kitchen oven. It worked.
My quilt blocks did not shrink evenly. Ambers planet, sun, and stars came out great. Her flower is beautiful. I think the resulting size depends upon how long you leave them in the oven. The Walking Dead logos did start out two different sizes.
Amber wanted to see what would happen if we melted a whole box. So we put just the bottom of one box in the oven, thinking it would shrink to a small box. It didn’t. It shrunk flat. Next Amber decorated our last box and put it in the oven. Now she has an original name tag.
My sister came by. She was intrigued. She asked if they were water proof. I thought they were. But after wetting it a bit, then rubbing it on a piece of paper. Some of the ink came off. We will have to figure out how to make them waterproof.
Do you have any ideas how to make them water proof?
If you try this, get some of the new pastel sharpies. When the plastic shrinks, the colors deepen. As you can see in Amber’s before and after. So if you want light colors, you need to start with lighter ink.
Have fun trying it!
C
Maybe an acrylic sealant would keep the color from coming off?
I’ll have to give it a try. I wonder if I sand the plastic before coloring it might help.