Face It...a very special bag charm

Good morning friends. First of all please can I thank everyone, both here on my blog and on the Visible Image Facebook page, for all your kind birthday wishes you left me on Saturday. I had such a lovely weekend...and the sun shone too. 😊

It's another marvellous Monday and I'm here with my latest DT inspiration for Visible Image. Although most of my time is spent making paper crafts many of you are aware that another of my hobbies is silversmithing and jewellery making. I attend a weekly class and I have just finished a new pendant (which I will share with you soon). I was recently commissioned to make some more of my bag charms. Here are a couple of examples of what I have made..and yes over the years I have made just about every theme you can imagine...cat lovers, artists, chocolate lovers, musicians..the list is pretty endless!

My most recent were for; a knitter

 some very girlie ones

and one American lady wanted something very "English" so I made an Alice in Wonderland bag charm...with tea themed charms. 

I use artisan one of a kind handmade glass lampwork beads in my bag charms, made by my talented friends and attach metal charms.

For my inspiration today I wondered how I could incorporate Visible Image stamps into a special bag charm. Whilst spring cleaning my garden studio ready for my summer crafting I found a packet of Shrink Plastic..with one last snippet left inside...which got me thinking....👀

Grab a cuppa and I will share my step by step....

I used my Face It Stamps available here

and the Bold and Beautiful sentiment from the Own It set here. These stamps are now all back in stock, having sold out several times recently. Visible Image will also be at Ally Pally at the weekend...and I will be there on Sunday.

I found that black Ranger Archival ink worked best on my shrink plastic but I did also use a red for the lips.

I die cut out all my "charms" but you can cut the plastic with scissors. I used blue pencil to colour the eyes and added some purple to the lid for eyeshdow.

Try to keep a firm steady pressure when stamping. It's very easy to slip on the plastic. I used an acryllic block rather than my MISTI as I felt I had better control over the slippery plastic surface.

Once die cut I made a hole in the top of each piece.

To give an idea of scale pre heating I have used a £1 coin. I haven't seen the new £1 coins yet..have you? To shrink the plastic I used a heat gun but you can bake it too.

There is no way I could take photos whilst heating the plastic, it does have a mind of its own. One tip I can give is, "Be Brave and don't Panic!" The plastic will crinkle up and appear to stick..just flip it over and gently tease it with a pokey tool. When it finishes shrinking immediately place an acrylic block on top to flatten it out while it cools down.

Here's the after photo....look at those diddy charms... you can see that the eyes are about the size of the £1 coin now.

I thought they looked too plain left white so I had a play with some methods of colouring.

I found that the best method for me was to use Sharpie pens, a lot of other mediums just wipe off.

I even coloured the edges and the backs

So then it was time to wire wrap some gorgeous artisan lampwork glass beads from my stash.












add some jump rings to my shrink plastic charms

and put together my Bold and Beautiful Visible Image bag charm....

and a couple of close ups to show the details

I would like to enter my bag charm into the following challenges;

Pixies's snippets playground week 275/6 I now need to buy some more shrink plastic as I have none left! It just shows how useful our snippets are and why us crafters keep all those little bits and pieces...you never know when you might need them ;0)

Love to create 1/2 #7anything creative/mixed media

Stamping sensations 1/3 anything goes

Simon says stamp Wednesday anything goes


I hope that you might be inspired to use your stamps to make some charms to use...not just for jewellery but to use in your card making too. It really is great fun playing with shrink plastic ...enjoy 😆 and don't panic when heating it! If you have any questions do email me...my email address is on the right hand side bar of my blog. I'm always happy to help.

Thanks for visiting me today and for the kind comments you take the time to leave.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x