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Thursday, July 10, 2014

Shrink plastic teacher gifts


It's my daughter's last week of school this week - she's just turned 6 and is finishing Year one.  The time has just flown by!  I wanted to make something a little personal to say 'thank you' to the teachers and teaching assistants in her class for all their hard work over the last year.  I also wanted it to feel like it was more from my daughter than from me, and at the same time, something that they would keep for a while.

Following on from last week's post about making shrink plastic fridge magnets out of my daughter's first drawings, I thought that I'd get her to draw a picture of her and her teacher that I could turn into a fridge magnet.

Well, I left her to draw a pretty picture on the front of a card that I was hoping to scan in and turn into a fridge magnet.  While I was busy in the kitchen, this is what she came up with at her craft table.


Although it wasn't what I was expecting, I loved it and it gave me an idea for a design.  It's not completely perfect, (which I think is adorable), but it does show that she tried to spell it all on her own, which should make her teachers very proud.

I decided to put her words and signature on the front of an apple made out of inkjet shrink plastic and turn it into a magnet that they could use either at home, or at school.

I wanted to grab the writing and so I photographed it and then opened it in Photoshop.


I darkened the writing using the curves function.


I then selected all of the background using the wand tool...


... and then chose to inverse the selection so only the letters had been selected.


Finally I lightened the writing selection until it was all white and copied it for later.




Here's the red apple that I used as the background for my magnet.



I adjusted the size of the writing until it fitted neatly onto the front of the apple and then added my daughter's name using the same technique for grabbing the writing.


I then resized the apple to about 9.5cm wide and arranged 4 of them on a page, to be printed onto shrink plastic.

I left them for half an hour and then shrunk them in the oven in the same way as my fridge magnets made from a child's drawings.


To seal the ink and make the magnets long lasting I sprayed them with a coat of acrylic sealing spray which has given them a lovely matte finish.


As in the previous magnets I stuck neodymium magnets to the back with some E6000 glue.


I'm really pleased with how they've turned out and my daughter is very proud of them too as they've got her writing on them.

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Inkjet shrink plastic is amazing stuff!  Here are some personalised wine glass charms we made to show off our obsessions!


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