Rainy Sunday

Nothing better than a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Sure, there was a big pile of laundry to be folded and put away, but it will still be there tomorrow. Knitting and detangling yarn that my little dog had jumbled seemed like a far better use of my time.

I also made a couple of pairs of earrings. I took photos of the earrings, but I need to get the film developed, because I live in the dark ages and don't have a digital camera yet. I'll post those pictures when I get them.

The earrings are pretty simply constructed out of shrink plastic and glass beads. I made the shrink plastic beads months ago, but only just got around to finishing the earrings.

As this was my first adventure with shrink plastic since a Shrinky Dink color-your-own Care Bears kit in elementary school, the design was pretty simple. I used Microsoft clip art to find some cool black and white botanical images. I used the shrink paper that you can run through an ink jet printer. It starts out translucent, but turns opaque white once you shrink it and dink it. My friend Liz also had some that you could draw or stamp on that stays translucent after it is shrinked and dinked. I'm not sure if that applies to all brands of shrink plastic, but it means that my beads came out black and white.

An image about the size of a half dollar seems to shrink down to a nice size for earrings. And a standard hole punch makes a nice hole for a jump ring.

Watching them shrink is still really fun, so I think I'll have more shrink plastic adventures in the future.