A Shrink Plastic Meltdown

I spend a large proportion of my free time colouring in shrink plastic. I do it during quiet periods at work, and also at home in the evening. Thus, when I make a mistake, or if the shrinking warps or goes funny in the oven, or sticks to itself, or I forget to punch a hole in it (tally so far - 3 times) I get very irritable for about an hour. But nothing compared to the horrendeousness that was last week. I spent all of Thursday getting my printer working. Because I bought a cheap deskjet in a sale at Wilkinson, I have to reinstall the drivers every so often, which takes about an hour to download, then another half an hour to install. Then another hour working out why it is just feeding paper through and not actually printing anything (no reason found as yet - but printing seems to occur 1 out of 10 sheets)

Anyway, once it was set up and I had sorted out what I was going to print on the new inkjet shrink plastic I had bought for 2.50 a sheet in the Rip Off Store Ltd, and printed it out, and cut it out with scissors and actually got it into the oven, the stuff warped so tragically that I had to start again. I went through about 8 sheets trying to get it right, and eventually ended up with a sort of oval shape which I quite liked. So I started varnishing and went to bed.

I woke up Friday morning, to this:

As you can see, the ones I have varnished reacted badly to the ink/varnish combo. Despite very kind comments on flickr, I have yet to see how I can use these. So I tried again.

And forgot to punch holes in the big ones.

FINALLY I worked out that I needed to spray them with acrylic spray first. One layer didn't do it (another batch wasted) but now I have a batch ready to varnish that have a very thick layer of the spray, so *fingers crossed* I think I may have cracked it. I'm bored out my skull with the repetition and probably won't bother with inkjet shrinkies again. Grr!

Anyway, I'll show you them when they are done. Rant over.

On a lighter note, we are getting a kitten! Here he is, the little scamp:

It will be two weeks until they are ready to be parted from their Mummy. We don't know what we are calling him yet, I just hope the Big Ginger Beast (our other cat) doesn't eat him. We already have a cat, a baby and a tarantula, and people are advising me against adding to my brood. But quite frankly, I'm feeling hormonal and it's either the kitten or another baby. (!) I've gone for the kitten, less pain, extra weight and general expense.

Please don't forget to check out www.twinklyspangle.com for my latest stuff - we are currently still offering free shipping on all purchases.