Dreaming Spirals

I bought a pack of postcard sized shrink plastic from Hobbycraft a few years ago, thinking the kids might like to play with it.   But there was a distinct lack of interest so I appropriated it myself.  And with the advent of the Gocco, the postcard sized pieces were just the right size.  As you know, when I start printing anything that doesn’t run out of the way is a candidate and these were no exception.

Here is a piece with my crow stamped on it:

For the last few months, however, I’ve just had these pieces of plastic sitting there gradually getting used up, and hadn’t got round to shrinking them.  So last week I remedied that.  It was a bit of a learning curve – I started off with the heat gun but this didn’t give much control and the pieces ended up a bit knobbly and occasionally bits stuck to each other, so I did the rest in the oven.    Here they are all together:

I had punched holes in some of them to begin with – one, two, or lots.  And I rounded off most of the corners.    I did try punching shapes with a punch but that particular one stuck in the punch and cracked when I tried to release it. 

I like these of Rouen Cathedral and stamped angel… in reverse!  I didn’t realise that the shrink plastic was clear and the side you looked at was the reverse of the side you stamp.  But it doesn’t matter. 

I stamped this crow and then rubbed a yellow – yes, yellow – stamp pad around the outside.

And this one is my ‘Newport houses’ print, none the worse for being in reverse!  I did this with the heat gun as you can probably tell.  On reflection, I quite like the irregularities of shrinking with a heat gun.  The finished pieces, by the way, are about 1″x1.5″ so they did shrink a LOT – having started out at 4″x6″.  I might put one or two for sale on Etsy – they might make good embellishments for journals or small quilts or mixed media pieces.    What do you think?