Shrink Plastic & Die Cuts & Resin

Materials:

Shrinky Dinks brand black, inkjet and white

Spellbinders Fleur de lis for the squares,

Spellbinders Decorative Labels 8 for the one rectangle,

Decorative Labels 8 for the simple church one.

Circle punch 2" from Michaels' recollection

Toothpicks

mixing plastic cup

wood stick for mixing

straw for gently blowing the resin for the bubbles to come up

hole puncher for the little holes

Enviro Tex Lite resin

Brother and sister stamp from Magnolia with stazon ink

White stazon opaque on black:

      Little circles had Inkadinkado flowers and butterflies background stamp

      Large circle had Hero Arts Flower swirl Vine stamp

Krylon crystal clear spray

Stamp your image with stazon, the opaque white looks really nice on black or print your image on inkjet.  Remember to lighten your image quite a bit.  On Photoshop Elements I put my image at 50 to 60% transparency.

Pick a nice size die and remember it will shrink to about 40% of original size.  I also put a white copier paper on top of the shrink plastic so it won't pick up little pieces of other paper or smudge.  After you die cut gently fold the plastic and paper back and forth and peel the paper off your shrink plastic.

Bake according to directions, I take it out of oven 30 seconds after it flattens out.  I place it on a flat surface and flatten them out with an acrylic block so they are nice and level.

Wait a few minutes.  Then I give them a nice coat of Acrylic sealer (outside since it smells) and let them dry.

The next day, I mix up a small quantity of Envirotex, a little goes a long way.  I place the shrinks on a non stick mat (silicone mat works well or wax paper).  I mix the resin gently but thoroughly.  With the wood stick I get a bit of resin and drop it gently in the middle of my shrink, I start with less so it doesn't drip down the sides.  I get a toothpick and gently push the resin to the edges being careful not to push it too far out.  With a straw, I gently blow the resin.  This pops the little bubbles and that's why you need thin layers.  Make sure you don't blow too much condensation or the moisture in your breath will ruin your piece.

Slowly add more resin until you have a nice dome.  I can push resin just around my little holes so that they actually don't get covered by the resin.  Cover them with a tupperware or something to keep dust from settling on them.  I moved them a little to make sure that the resin didn't pool at the bottom on the intricate designs.

Wait until it cures (72 hours) then you  have your nice charm!!!

A Little detail on what a nice dome they have:

How to store more movies on your IPAD!

So you want to travel and don't want to bring a bunch of DVDs with you... 

Here is how to get all of your movies on your IPAD in a few easy steps!!!

SD card: $35

Camera Connection kit: $29

Storing an extra 32 GB of movies for viewing on the IPAD: Priceless!!!!!

I purchased a wireless drive ($200) to use on vacation and it worked well but couple of things went wrong.  I can't use it in the airplane because the wireless drive creates a wifi signal and that's how the IPAD connects to the drive (you don't need internet, the drive creates the wifi signal).  It worked great on a car trip but a month later it died on me, big fail.  So I returned it to Costco (love Costco they really stand by their stuff and took the dead drive back for a full refund).

This is not my idea, I researched from a ton of different places and added my tricks and tips.

Copyright - this is a biggie, please only use movies that you legally purchased, bla, bla.  I don't want anyone here to infringe on any copyrights ok? :)  I only used movies I purchased.

Alright so I purchased a Sandisk 32 GB card, with each movie at about 1 to 3 GB I could fit quite a few movies.  

Also please remember to have at least 3 to 4GB of memory free on your IPAD or this won't work.

There a couple of ways of doing this but basically you are tricking your IPAD into thinking you are importing pictures and videos from your camera.

The easiest way I found was to put the new SD card into a camera and take a picture.  Why?  Because it is going to format the card and place the default folders in it.

If you don't have a camera that will take a SD card we can work around it.

Click on image to find it on Amazon

Insert SD card on your computer or if you don't have a card reader on your computer you can buy a SD card reader (about $10). 

Open windows explorer and you should see that the SD card has a DCIM folder and a 100OLYMP folder and there is the pic you took:

Find your movie (has to be in the format that IPAD will play! I have mine as .mp4).  Move the movie file into the same DCIM/100OLYMP folder or the folder that your camera created.  If you didn't use a camera, just copy the same file structure from here.  IMPORTANT: you must rename the movie to 8 characters.  If you don't do this it will not let you import!!!  I renamed mine to something I could identify the movie.

Now "eject" the card. and get your camera card adaptor and plug into IPAD with your SD card.

camera connector kit here

Go to PHOTOS and select IMPORT  (Apple Support for more help) 

You will NOT see the file name - only the LENGTH of the movie that's why I created a cheat sheet where I list all my movies and their lengths (right click on the column header under details in explorer and choose to show LENGTH.  This way you can quickly find your movie by length.  You will not have a screenshot or any other identifier!

Only select one or two movies to import or you will run out of storage on your IPAD.  Click IMPORT SELECTED and then go to your PHOTOS folder, that's right, if you go to your VIDEOS folder they won't be there.  When it asks you if you want to delete from camera say NO so you keep your movie in your SD Card.

PLAY from your PHOTOS folder.

When you are done and want to watch another movie then delete the file from your IPAD and repeat the process.  Importing only takes a couple of minutes for a full length movie so it is a quick process.  You can now carry all your movies in small SD cards and watch them on a plane - car ride - anywhere :)

We also got one of these and it was awesome for the long car ride (for more info click on picture):

Shrink Plastic Fail

Sharing a couple of big fails here in an attempt to save you some time.

Fail #1: top left: Printed with inkjet shrink plastic, let it dry for over 3 weeks, put clear water based Varathane on it - bled ink everywhere - FAIL!

Fail #2: Top right: stamped with Stazon, colored with Copic (make sure to never let the copic touch the stazon ink), let it dry well, covered with clear embossing powder and heat gun, bubbles everywhere, shrink got warped and there was no way to get it leveled without touching the goey embossing powder - FAIL!  other people had success with this - NOT ME!

Fail #3: Bottom left: Stazon ink on regular white shrink plastic, let it set for two days, put clear embossing powder on it with heat gun, bled everywhere and warped my shrink, this one looked really good before I tried to put clear embossing powder on it. FAIL!

I used this shrink plastic got it at Michaels with 40% coupon:

Angry Birds Bags

I got this wonderful idea for Angry Bird goodie bags from More from the Mohrs blog and decided to make a template for cutting.  There are plenty of Angry bird goodie bags on the web so I do not claim this as my idea.  I just wanted to make the process easier.  I created the birds faces in Inkscape and below you will find 3 formats that you can download.

I bought the Michaels 4 color set of bags,they come in Red, Orange, Green, Yellow and Blue.  I added the Orange Angry Bird's face to the mix so that each bag would have it's own bird or Pig face!  Then I cut them with scissors and added the goodies.

PNG file here

PDF file here

SVG file here

The goodies:

Coloring sheets (just googled Angry Birds coloring sheets!)

Flying discs these were a HUGE hit and super cheap!  Those things go far and fast!!!


Tatoos - skip them they say 16 count but they really are 8 count (just not worth it)

Crayons

Gummies

Rings

The cake we got at Savemart it was made of cupcakes which is so easy to serve!  They didn't have an angry birds theme so I asked for a Cars theme cake and put our sons decorations on top after washing them really well!