Carol Ponsford - Fun shrink art clips for art journaling!

Hi bloggers, Carol Ponsford here today with a project to add some fun to 

your art journaling, I will be showing you how I created these clips to hold your pages

open while you create in your art journals that will add a smile to your face.

I started with Shrink plastic, the stencil of choice (this one is L767 - Three Swamp Monsters 

stencil designed by Angela Treat Lyon), and a fine line Sharpie. I love these little whimsical characters!

(I also created one using L502 designed by Gwen Lafleur that you will see further down the page.)

I placed the stencil down on some card stock paper and traced around all of the sections

of the stencil and added some extra embellishments where I wanted.

With the stencil still in place, I took colored pencils and colored in all of the areas.

When using Shrink plastic, you need to remember that when you shrink the image,

the colors will become darker than first applied during the shrinking process.

Next, I carefully cut the image out. Since this image had many thin areas, I left 

some of the uncolored areas to add support for the thin sections.

The next step was to shrink the image. I used an old splatter screen to help 

keep the plastic from curling up too much and getting stuck to itself.

I had some areas stick but I was able to use a needle tool to pull the 

stuck areas apart carefully so I would not tear pieces off of the image.

I stopped part of the way through to show how much the piece will twist and curl

during the heating/Shrinking process. As you can see it gets quite curly.

The image will shrink approximately to half of it's original size as shown above.

I also did 3 other images using other types of pens to color the image. The top image 

was done with Posca markers, the second image was done with Copic markers, 

and the 3rd was the one with colored pencils. On this 4th image I 

did not trace the image on first, I started with placing the stencil under the 

shrink plastic, colored in areas with Copic markers and then laid the stencil 

on top and traced with the Sharpie pen. I wanted to show that there

are several ways to use shrink plastic and different pens that will work.

The colored pencils will give a much softer look than the Posca or Copic markers.

The next step was to trace each piece onto a piece of card stock and 

cut it out. Because I wanted to make sure the colors showed as much as possible

I felt putting white behind them would add to their brightness as well

as add a more absorbent base to help them adhere to the metal clips.

I used Gel Matte Medium to glue them on to the card stock.

This step might not be necessary but I did sand the card stock on the back

of the pieces a little as well as the metal hair clips I used to help them adhere better.

 

I used 2 thin popsicle sticks to hold the hair clips in place during the gluing stage

to help insure that the glue would not drip on the clip and seal it closed. This 

also helped to level the clips and stabilize them while they were drying.

I used 527 glue but I am sure there are many other glues that would work.

Once they are dry, I hope you will enjoy using them in your art journaling to hold the 

pages open as you create in your journal. And just maybe, when you catch 

one out of the corner of your eye, they will bring a smile!

Thank you so much for joining me today on the blog and I hope you will

create some of these journal clips for yourself. I want to thank 

StencilGirl® Products for providing me with these stencils so 

that I can share what I created with you.

Happy Creating!

To see more of my work please visit my Instagram page.