plastic industry india

The next couple of days we will be featuring tutorials by altered artist Lucy Edmondson.

Lucy lives in North Hampshire,and is married to Colin, who is a landscape photographer, for 25 years. She's  been rubber stamping for about 3 years or so, and has had her work published in UK magazines. She will teaching card making evening classes soon. Although she loves papercrafts, she also enjoys Mixed Media work and Altered Art because of challenge of working with different surfaces and experimenting with techniques. She is a member of 2 UK rubber stamping forums, and regularly has craft days with  friends.

More of Lucy's work can be seen on her blog at:  http://www.lucystruecolors.blogspot.com/


So now...enjoy Lucy's Tutorials:

When I was asked to suggest a tutorial for my term as DT Member for the Altered Element, I immediately thought of Friendly Plastic. This is a product I have used quite a bit over the last few years, and I knew Lynne was going to be stocking it, but I also knew some of my very experienced crafting friends had a bit of a fear of it – even one friend who normally likes nothing better than a bit of smoking and burning! So I hope I can eradicate any fears – you will not get a serious burn from Friendly Plastic. Many techniques do not require you to touch the Friendly Plastic with your fingers at all. If you are using art moulds, however, you might get a nasty Ouch! moment if you don’t follow the simple rule of having a bowl of water beside you to dip your fingers in before you touch it, but otherwise you will be fine.


I had such a lot of material to cover that I am doing a two-parter, and I hope you will give it a go before I move onto jewellery in Part 2! When working with Friendly Plastic, you can either soften it to make an impression, or completely melt it for filling art moulds, etc. (I buy my Krafty Lady art moulds from the Stamp Bug and there is a huge choice). You can either use warm water at a constant 60 degrees C, using a thermometer, a griddle or oven, or a heat gun, but for the purposes of this tutorial I will be using a heat gun. When you buy your FP it will come in a strip, 17.5 cm x 3.5 cm, or in pellets, and there is a huge choice of colours and patterns, many of which are metallic, although some are primary colours:-




You are a little bit constrained by the size of the pieces at first, but once you get the hang of it you will be able to piece different colours together to create stunning effects, as with the beaded dragonfly art mould in Part 2. When you are choosing your colours of FP, you will notice that the name of the colour on the reverse of the tab has a secondary colour, and this is the colour of the back of your FP and it is often black, but can also be pink or blue, or a variety of colours. The reason I mention it is you can re-work all your little scraps of FP, but it will mean your secondary colour will be merged into your project, which can look very pretty, as with the touch of pink in the marbled heart. If you specifically want a project to just have the surface colour, just don’t rework it and use your scraps for another time.The only other specific tool you will need for this first project, other than those you will already have in your stash, is a marbling comb, which looks like this:-




You can also buy friller tools and pokey tools but I won't be using them on this occasion.

And a small cookie cutter such as a heart or flower. We will use this on the first item, which will be an embellishment for the box we are going to decorate:-


Marbled Heart Embellishment
by Lucy Edmonson of True Colors


1.    Cut strips of Friendly Plastic in a variety of colours to co-ordinate with your project, cutting across the width of the strip, about half a centimetre wide. Stick a piece of double sided tape to a heat proof craft sheet and place the strips as shown, so that they are touching each other, and held in place by the tape. I used Pewter/Black, Copper/Pink, Jade, and Light Blue. (The tape is to prevent the heat gun blowing the pieces away, but if you have the hairdryer type with less blow, you may be able to manage without).





2. Holding your heat gun about 6 inches away, and on the lower heat setting if you have one, start to heat the FP. After about 30 seconds the edges will start to soften and the surface will become crazed. You don’t want the FP to become completely molten for this technique so turn off your heat gun now.





3.    Gently drag the marbling comb through the warm FP from the bottom of the strip to the top to give this marbled effect. You can easily pull any stray bits off the comb to clean it.



4.    ‘Ink up’ your cookie cutter shape, which could be a small heart or flower or similar, with Versamark to act as a release agent, and press it firmly into the warm FP. Leave it for approximately one to two minutes until it is cool, then remove the cutter. If it doesn’t quite come away completely you can simply pull it from the sticky tape and cut around the outline with a pair of scissors.



5.   I quite like the waste piece:-



Here is the final heart:-







This will form our embellishment to cover the ends of the ribbon on the lid of our box.


STAY TUNED FOR THE REST OF LUCY'S TUTORIALS...TOMORROW!