How to Work with Shrinky Dinks

Shrinky Dinks where have you been all my life! I've been puzzling for a while now about how I can make a thick image for a brooch and I have finally figured it out! Polystyrene! aka shrinky dinks or the #6 recyclable plastic you get in some clear takeout containers. I looked for clear containers but no such luck, plus I wanted a white background so I caved and bought the branded Shrinky Dink paper, about 5$ at Michaels. There is a printer-friendly version that costs almost three times as much for 6 sheetes ($13!) if you're interested. I figured I could just trace my own artwork and so I did. This is what I found out about how to (and how not to) work with shrinky dinks:

The white sheet is translucent and I could trace a print of my artwork through it on a window or just a well-lit room. Also the sheet was thin enough to cut very easily and if I cut into my artwork by accident, it just melts back together in the oven!

The media that worked well were:
- sharpies (but sharpies smear when resin is applied over it)
- sharpie paints - baked well, but, again, smears when resin is applied over it - should be fine if you don't want to varnish it.
- copic markers - these worked great and did not smear BUT the color doesn't lay down normally, it just kind of pools on the surface of the plastic. I decided to do a textured fur on my kitty so it worked fine, but you will not get a smooth wash of color like on a piece of bristol or marker paper.
- pastels - bright color, good for covering large areas evenly. Might need some fixative afterward so the color doesn't flake off.

Worked poorly or had issues:
- staedtler water-based markers - smears in the oven
- pencil - just doesn't put color down, might work if you lightly sand the plastic

I pre-heated my toaster oven to 325F and popped it in on top of a piece of parchment paper. It took LITERALLY 20 seconds to shrink, curl and flatten - so don't walk away! Don't be alarmed when it contorts into strange shapes, it will settle down I promise! I didn't handle it much after it flattened but I've seen people say you can extra-flatten it with a spatula. I tried this once with a paper towel and spatula and found that the paper towel's texture gets imprinted on it, which I didn't like. Live and learn. Here's the "after" with resin applied on top:

The drawing shown at the top is the center cat. It looked great before I added Lisa Pavelka's Magic Glos which made the black sharpie paint smear like crazy. Same thing happened to the left kitty which had regular sharpie for its black lines - ARG. The bunny face ended up nicely because I used copic and prismacolor markers for everything with no smearing. The resin is uneven because only one layer has been added, I plan to add another layer when the first is cured. Note that the colors also darkens significantly when the images shrink too.

Another thing I found was that the images all shrank unevenly - they shrank more horizontally, or got 'skinnier' than the original image. If you look at the cat on the very left, I drew him at slight angle to the vertical axis of the plastic sheet, and he shrank on an angle too. So beware! Align your pictures perfectly up and down with the page, and widen them about 15% to compensate for this uneven shrinking.

So in summary, things to be careful of with shrinky dinks:
- uneven shrinking - stretch your image because it will get 'skinnier' as it shrinks
- you probably don't need to handle them much to make them flat
- plastic sheet doesn't like: pencil crayons, water based marker
- if you want to finish with a resin topping don't use sharpies, they will smear

DIY: How TO - knit from a hank and avoiding winding a skein

My favorite yarns always come in unfriendly hanks that require winding and I don't have a swift. Plus I have just been recently told that winding a skein too early is bad because it stretches and warps the yarn. What to do! This all came to a head when I recently bought a hank of SUPER fine yarn from Habu (if you have never checked them out, they sell lust-worthy luxury yarns). I wondered why it was that yarn came off a swift into a winder so easily but doesn't when a hank is unwound by hand.... 

Finally, I came up with a super easy technique to knit directly with a hank. Hooray!

All you need to do is stretch the hank between your knees and unwind loops by hand. Most hanks come in just the right size to be stretches over both my knees like below and when I need to unwind, I just put a little tension on the hank so it's stretched out by my knees - this magically prevents most tangles from happening just like when a hank is unwound from a swift! Tension is the key! (see photo #1 below)

This is slightly more time consuming than knitting from a skein, but it only takes a few second to unwind a few long loops from hank and this avoids the issue of stretching out your yarn improperly. Try it yourself! It's a lifesaver for me.

Another tip is to keep to position the hank so the non-working end of the yarn is near you between your knees like below, this way if the non-working end tangles you up, it's easy to figure it out. 

Yarn coming off the hank - easy! You don't have to keep the hank stretched out the whole time, just when you unwind. 

Odette, after a long haul

I finally finished this piece of art, thank god! It took me a rather long time, from sketch to fully digitally colored piece. Whew!

This print is available for purchase at: 

https://www.etsy.com/listing/127146470/swan-lake-digital-art-print-original?ref=shop_home_active

Art vs Craft

I've been thinking a lot about how to get more business on my etsy. I just saw an article about a woman who started her shop the same time as me but has gotten 7x more sales! Her artwork is not particularly complex, but it is very cute, all in one style, and all for one niche market (weddings) whereas I do sketches, artwork, crochet, needlwork and my shop is a mishmosh. I know this is handicapping my ability to have a 'brand' develop. Considering starting a new shop. Puzzle.

On another note, this is a scanned and cleaned up image I did for my husband a while ago with staedtler writing markers!

Princesses

Whew it's been a long time since I posted!!! I've gone through a whirlwind of interviews around the country and am now awaiting my fate which will be handed down by the medical match.

I've been thinking a lot of inspirational characters to girls that are also light and humorous. Fairy tales have been floating in my head for a while now and I finally did my first; the frog prince! More to come.. I hope

I also did the first of what I hope will be a line of ethnic princesses. They remind me a bit of classical drawings of tribes and ethnicities and would look great in a grouping on the wall.

New Year and lots of changes

2013! A new year and lots has happened. I've almost finished my extremely long stream of job interviews and I've posted a ton of new stuff on my etsy site. My husband has continued to encourage me to draw which he considers my foremost gift so I've obliged and somehow a tweaky little pufferfish was born as well as a bunch of other creatures.

All of these were done with copic and prismacolor alcohol markers, white gel marker, and judicious use of a clear blender marker. If you want to start with alcohol markers, I'd recommend buying prismacolor first, they cost about half as much and perform almost as well. I did the pufferfish on marker paper which I'd never used before - it's ultra thin and smooth and surprisingly holds onto marker aggressively. I've used mostly bristol before and you can move pigment around with the blender after colors have dried on bristol but not the marker paper. 

Please feel free to check out my etsy shop for prints of any of these :)

abunnyandbear.etsy.com

Also I've gone on an Oya lace tangent and have been making these little flag charms like mad. I think i'll make a series since I have all this lovely vintage mercerized cotton lying around.

~ happy new year

Original bunny and bear canvas art shoes finally done!

I finally got up the gumption to finish my illustrated shoes. I'm really sad that these are a bit too big for me... I'll be happy to keep them if they don't sell. I am pretty attached to the bunny and the super bright carrots that turned out surprisingly well. Check out the listing at: https://www.etsy.com/listing/114009730/original-art-illustrated-shoes-bunny-and

Hurricane Sandy - how I'm helping

I am so heartbroken every time I see new updates and especially fatalities on the news from Hurricane Sandy. I've been puzzling over the last few days how best I can help. I finally decided to make apple crochet charms, the symbol for new york, and donate the profits to Red Cross. I made this apple today and I'm pretty happy with it. I might get green ribbon to go with the 'apple' theme more, but I really like the tiffany blue too. I am keeping my fingers cross for everyone on the East Coast who all have a very long recovery ahead.
Check them out at: https://www.etsy.com/listing/113668320/apples-for-hurricane-relief-crochet

Fresh Perspective: Starting anew on etsy

Well it's been a little bit since I've posted. I started a new shop called ABunnyandBear on etsy. Sadly I decided to give up on my jewelry venture, the competition is just way too rough, I wasn't getting any traffic. On the upside, I sold something the third day my new shop was open yay! I think I'm going to focus more on drawing, I'm all crocheted out for a while.

What markers, pens, paints do not fade from canvas shoes

I've always wanted to do a fantastic drawing on canvas shoes to be able to walk around and show off my hot digits. I definitely get the urge to doodle when I see toms or vans with awesome drawings and illustrations on them. Sadly, I've always had the fear of seeing my work slowly leak down the shoe and end up in a horrible mess if I step in a puddle. What if the marker smeared? Would these shoes be unwashable?? I took up the cause of trying a variety of different markers, pens, paints and finishes to answer this question: what mediums fade when used to draw on canvas shoes when washed?

You can see the exact results for each medium after washing below but here's the summary:

- Sharpie markers - YES stood up really well, did not smear when putting all purpose sealant on
- Gel pens - faded if left alone, looks good with sealant.
- Staedtler finelines - no, washed out and smeared. Boo
- Copic markers - Yes but some colors smeared when putting sealant on.
- Prismacolor markers - YES did not fade, did not smear
- Liquitex acrylic paints - YES - may need a sealant if you want a shiny smooth finish.


RESULTS:

You can see the pictures for the exact results for each medium after washing below but here's the summary:

- Sharpie markers - YES stood up really well, did not smear when putting sealant on, some may change color when sealant is put on (dark blue turned purple for me)
- Staedtler finelines - no, washed out and smeared. Boo
- Copic markers - Yes but some colors smeared when putting sealant on.
- Prismacolor markers - YES did not fade, did not smear
- Liquitext acrylic paints - YES - may need a sealant if you want a shiny smooth finish, light colors may fade a bit

THE METHOD:
I used a black and light colored canvas strip to draw on with a variety of markers and  acrylic paints. The right side of each strip has all purpose craft sealant painted over it.

The sealant gives it shiny finish as you can see (bottom)

Here is the list of exactly what I used:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
BLACK STRIP:
- metallic sharpie in red gold
- metallic sharpie in gold
- metallic sharpie in silver

- gelly roller in white
- sigma gel roller in white

white acrylic paint strip with the following markers drawn on top:
-- black sharpie
-- black copic marker
-- silver sharpie paint pen
-- purple sharpie
-- pink fat sharpie
-- blue copic marker
-- orange copic marker
- yellow acrylic paint on white

- yellow acrylic paint by itself.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
WHITE STRIP:
- sharpie in purple
- sharpie in green
- sharpie in blue
- sharpie in black
- fat sharpie in pink

- staedtler marker in blue
- staedtler marker in orange

- copic fineliner in black
- copic marker in yellow
- copic in red
- copic in black
- copic in purple
- copic in blue
- copic in orange
- copic in green

- prismacolor marker in grey
- prismacolor in dark grey
- prismacolor in tan



After washing.................................I washed the two strips in hot water with tide detergent, scrubbed with good vigor 

BLACK STRIP:

here are the results for the black strip.

As you can see the metallic sharpie paint markers stood up really well!

The white gel pens... not well at all.

The white acrylic background fadeda bit without the sealant - this may be a thickness issue I suspect this would be better if I had painted more layers. The markers on the white painted strip all seem a little faded to me, the sharpie changed color from blue to purple with sealant. I definitely think acrylic paints need a sealant.






WHITE STRIP:
Here's the white strip after washing.

The sharpies stood up surprisingly well again. Once again the blue got a purple-ish cast.

The second group with staedtler markers were obliterated. They smeared when I put the sealant on too - definitely no on those.

The copic markers stood up quite well also but did smear a bit when putting sealant on as you can see with the red line on the right.

The prismacolors stood up well and did not smear with sealant. Sweet!


Well there you go, good luck all!

Sun dial ring

A little while ago I posted about a little crochet/wire spiral I made - here is the finished product yay! I call it the sun dial ring. It has a kind of tribal-ish, I-could-be-seen-on-a-celebrity feeling doesn't it? Haha. I'm excited about the shop again.

New direction - children's drawing

My husband insists I'm wasting my drawing talent and I watched a video about how hard it is to sell jewelry on etsy, I'm changing it up. The two characters will be Bunny and Bear, which is what my husband and I call each other

Sun discs - new crochet theme

I bought an absolutely lovely ball of super fine ecru thread and I've been making a few items with them. I started making these 'sun discs' which have wire inside to keep them stiff. I wonder if people will be off put by the idea of a crochet fibre ring? It's been washed and survived well, dries well. Hope it's popular :)

Thrift store scores

Somehow discovering I can unwind sweaters into veritable mountains of yarn has turned me into a thrift store sweater fiend. I've been to maybe a dozen thrift stores in the month or so to find sweaters with the glorious double arrow seams that mean I can rip them up into a long continuous skein (Great tutorial on how to do this here: http://dawnprickett.blogspot.com/2008/01/recycling-sweaters-for-yarn.html). I've tried to limit myself only to natural fibres, especially silk, cashmere and fine wools and cottons but I still managed to find plenty to fit this bill!

I am currently ripping up a great cyan blue wool/angora sweater with good progress. I've gotten three fat skeins out of it from just the arms!. Does this change my desire to buy expensive new yarn? Sadly, no but hopefully I'll be distracted enough not to do it for a while!
 Liz Claiborne sweater
Great color
Three skeins from just the arms! Wowza!

The hanging sweaters above are ones that were meant to be cut up for yarn but I actually like how some of them look on me. Oh the conundrum! Especially the one on top - it's a camel colored 100% cashmere sweater.. maybe I'll spare that one...

You can see a neon green Ralph Lauren cotton sweater peeking out - that one is definitely meant for a super mod afghan I think. Some of these sweaters have ultra fine yarn, finer than a typical lace weight and I'm not sure how ripping them up will go. I've chosen ones that have very little to no felting or pilling so hopefully the yarn doesn't fall apart. To be continued!

Plarn!!

I've been saving plastic bags like a crazy hoarder and I've finally gotten around to making plarn (plastic yarn, recycled bag yarn). I want to make an organic looking, maybe tribal looking bowl. The plarn ended up being a much smaller gauge than I had anticipated (aka way more work...booo). I'm working next on bowl with a five-pointed base, we'll see how it goes!

Afghans color work

I started making this afghan a few months ago and veerry quickly ran out of yarn. I kind of made up a way to do the color work with the arrow design, twisting the threads together on each stitch to make sure they weren't just floating in the back. I just ordered a bunch more cream yarn hopefully it'll be finished soon

Bobbles and Baubles - Trial and Error in Crochet

More little crochet balls woohoo! I've been using a vintage ball of thread and other embroidery thread to make some colorblock earrings. I've been having issues trying to make a seamless transition from one color to another because the threads are often different in width. The two middle balls below were made with thread split in half and I think they look much smoother. I really don't like the outer two that have bumps in the transition. Well. Live and learn.

I used this lesson for my new earrings up on etsy :)

New earrings

Inspirations: The Incas

I recently read 'Turn Right at Machu Picchu' by Mark Adams, a journalist for Adventure magazine who retraced the steps of the most famous explorer of that site, Hiram Bingham (Indiana Jones is thought to be loosely based on him). The descriptions of the precisely cut, titanic sized stones of the Inca sites filled my mind with images of brightly colored textures and designs. Even in Idaho I noticed an alpaca farm about a mile from my house! They're so dang cute!

Inca design seems to be less featured in fashion than, say, Navajo or Aztec, here's a fantastic example - it looks almost european in the face but the patterns are clearly unique. 

I love native design but it does always bring up the ethical dilemma of using traditional patterns from a culture that is not my own and whether that is disrespectful or plagiarism. Personally, I think the more ethnic patterns are featured in fashion the more support native handicrafts will be supported - who doesn't want a real Navajo blanket after seeing these Pendleton for opening ceremony shorts!!!