Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! We had a sweet morning before work and school exchanging valentines goodies and cards:) The kids are looking forward to the valentine party at school and as a classroom treat we cut hearts out of watermelon (cut the rind off a watermelon and slice it 3/4″ thick and use a cookie cutter to cut hearts or other shapes) and made a fruit plate that I will bring to school in a bit. Here is the valentine card I made my husband. Stamps are by About Art Accents.
I used Friendly Plastic to make the charm I was given a bunch of old friendly plastic sticks last year. Friendly plastic has a shelf life, after a couple of years it becomes brittle and snappy, not bendy and pliant, so you can’t use it for all techniques. Luckily I discovered ways to use the old stuff so if you have some friendly plastic from long ago or if you bought some recently and discovered that it breaks rather than bends here are some techniques you can try. Get a cuppa coffee folks, this is a long, but hopefully entertaining and informative video. You can do any of these techniques with new Friendly Plastic as well!
And, yes, I found something else to use my coffee cup warmer for! Yay, it earns a place on my worktable:) So to recap the following techniques will work with old FP: Marbleizing, inlay or crazy quilt technique, ooze technique (pressing metal mesh or wire into the melted plastic so it oozes up around it) and breaking up and melting in molds.
Tips: Snap off bit of plastic (like I did in the video.) Cutting the old stuff with scissors will make it shatter (the new stuff should cut just fine.) If you are buying new Friendly plastic, check it in the store to make sure it bends, if it snaps it is old. Don’t buy more than you can use up in a year, short shelf life, remember.
A word of caution: The charms made with old friendly plastic should probably be used for card or scrapbook embellishments as they are not the most rugged unless you use several layers and re-enforce with wire or if the pieces are small (earring size.) I tried snapping some of the larger pieces and they did snap with a bit of pressure so not ideal for long lasting jewelry. I have not used new FP so I am not sure how jewelry would last after it was a few years old, weather it would become brittle with age. There are a ton of fun tutorials on the Friendly Plastic blog to give you an idea of what artists are doing with the new pliant sticks. I highly recommend you have a look and if you have any question on the new Friendly Plastic they would be the ones to ask and they have beginner kits at a reasonable price.
That’s all for today! I hope if you have some old sticks of Friendly Plastic around you will give this a try rather than becoming frustrated and throwing them away, til next time happy crafting!