Honey, I shrunk the die cuts! LOL! I’ve been dying to try out shrink film for years, and I finally got the chance. I ordered some of the new Brutus Monroe Matte Shrink Film to try it out. I liked this one because you don’t have to put it in the oven – just use your heat tool! Let me show you the fun I had with this shrink film.
SHRINK FILM
The only problem I had with doing this is that my ink just won’t dry! I thought that with the film being matte, it would be okay. Live and learn, right?
First, choose stamp images that have coordinating dies, that will cut out the outline of the image. Stamp the images onto a sheet of the shrink film. I used Nocturne ink; next time I’ll try StazOn, and see if it will dry. Next, use your markers to colour the images. I used my Copic markers. These dried better than the Nocturne ink. Now, set up the page of stamped & coloured images in your Big Shot, with their coordinating dies. I had just chose a random selection of images from different stamp companies. This picture below shows the images after they’ve been die cut.
I noticed that the darker colours give better coverage than lighter ones. With the shrink film being slick, you can’t really do any colour blending. And you can see that I had a bit of problems with the black outlines smearing a bit. But, this was a first try!
AFTER DIE CUTTING
When the images are die cut, you’re ready to do the shrinking. Work with one die cut at a time. I found it easiest to place it in a small box, and then apply the heat with my heat tool. The first one I tried holding with tweezers, but when heated, the image first curls into a tiny ball (cue the internal freak out), and then it straightens out again. Letting it do this inside the box with the lid open is much easier than with tweezers! Here’s a photo below, of the images after being heat shrunk.
They’re SO TINY! And CUTE! The heat shrinks the film, so each one becomes quite a bit thicker; maybe 1/8″ thick. They would make cute embellishments for cards or scrapbooking. If you want to make charms with them, you’d definitely have to create the hole for a jump ring or string before doing the shrinking.
Just for reference, I took a photo, below, of the now shrunk die cuts with their original die. Have a look!
A FUN EXPERIMENT WITH SHRINK FILM
This was a lot of fun to try, and I’ve learned some things to do differently next time. The die cuts shrink to about 1/10 their original size, so try to choose larger images. As I said earlier, I’ll try using StazOn ink for the outlines, to see if it will dry better. And I’ll try to stay with darker colours for colouring the images. If you’ve tried doing this before, let me know what worked for you, and any tips you may have!
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I am so happy to know about that shrink film! I LOVE using this for so many things (I still have some earrings from years ago). It will be especially fun now that we have more tools to cut and color with. Cute, cute, CUTE projects, Deborah!