Friday, August 26, 2011

Ever wonder if rub-ons work on Shrinky Dinks?

Me too.  So I decided to try it.

I put rub-ons from two manufacturers (Making Memories and Cosmo Cricket) on shrink plastic from two manufacturers (Grafix and OTC).  I made sure the rub-ons were thoroughly adhered to the shrink plastic and had no flaws, then followed the instructions for proper shrinking.

Here are a few of the pieces I made:
  

I was expecting quite a bit of ripping and distortion.  Indeed, some of the rub-ons did rip and/or distort, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was minimal.  In both cases the words look pretty good.  There didn't seem to be any difference between manufacturers; instead, the heat of the oven (and thus the rate and direction of shrinking) seemed to be what caused the variation.  It was also crucial that the rub-on was applied thoroughly.  If there was even a tiny bit that wasn't burnished properly, that area ripped. 

This was an interesting experiment.  I don't know that I'd try it again.  It would make a lot more sense to apply a full-size rub-on to an already-shrunk tag or charm.  But if I needed to make an existing rub-on smaller, this is the way to do it.

1 comment:

  1. I'm sorry your experiments wasn't as successful as you would've liked Cindy! Thank you so much for sharing with us.

    ReplyDelete