Not So Friendly Plastic!

 I saw a blog post recently from

Elaine

who had found a box of Friendly Plastic amongst her craft stash that

 she'd bought many years ago when it was being

 sold off in a closing down sale.

She offered to share some of her supply but said as it was so

old it was quite brittle.

This is what she very kindly sent me (along with some Grungeboard pieces)

The individual strips were all in tact (apart from one tiny bit that had

broken off) when it arrived and I thought that it was fine.

When I cut into a strip though it shattered into tiny pieces!

Elaine was right - it had become brittle with age.

I compared it with some of my own strips (which I'd bought about 

four years ago) and although they looked the same,

the newer ones were much more pliable and didn't

snap when flexed.

However, I kept calm and carried on - spoke to it nicely

and the plastic became friendly again!!!

I cut the brittle plastic and made little piles of it

on my black craft sheet - starting with the red central cross

and heated it with my heat gun - and it all melted together nicely.

I then made piles for the white sections and then the blue -

it melted into each other so the Union Jack flag

took on a rather stylised image, but I quite liked the effect.

I made a little post it note book using two chipboard covers

with a Bind-it-all spine and hot glued the Friendly Plastic flag on.

The 'Keep Calm and Carry On' is a rubber stamped image

from the 'London Underground' set from 'Artistic Outpost'.

I stamped another image from the same stamp set

onto the back of the book.

This little book will be winging it's way over to Elaine

as a thank you for her generosity.

Thanks for looking x

Traffic Lights Swap

This is the second of two swaps Sian is currently hosting. We had to make three ATCs, one in each of the colours of traffic lights (red, amber and green) and each ATC also had to have on it some wire, some metal (in addition to the wire)and some plastic. How does she come up with these ideas!!!

The bases of each of my three ATCs were covered with some bright silver sticky tape which I then embossed (each in a different way) and then coloured with alcohol inks. The red and green wasn't a problem, but for the amber I used the Caramel ink and then went over with some amber metallic rub ons. The red and amber both have faces moulded from friendly plastic. This is the first time I'd used the plastic in a mould - I'm sure it should be easy but I think I need a bit more practice. The green one has a plastic button in the centre. The metal on each of them is - for red, the head-dress, for amber an old bottletop (the head is mounted in) and for green it is the metal corner pieces. The wire is for red, interlinked with the head-dress, for amber, the stem and leaves and for green it is attaching the button to the ATC.

Despite the gruesome looking face, I think my favourite of the three is the amber one. The petals are pieces of amber coloured acrylic mosaic. None of them have photographed very well unfortunately (well, I would say that wouldn't I!!)