Celebrating Craft Month with Shrink & Link Jewelry

Today's post is brought to you by: Emily Feliberty - Klutz Marketing Manager

 
March is National Craft month and as you can imagine it is a serious celebration in the Klutz office. It’s a time when we shake off the winter blues and set aside some time for crafting, or what we like to call “working.” ;) While I’m not exactly known for being the craftiest one in our group, I vowed to honor the festivities and try out our newest product, Shrink & Link Jewelry.

If you’ve never played with shrink plastic, here’s the deal: It’s a sheet of magic plastic on which you draw and color designs. Cut out your designs with ordinary scissors, bake them for mere minutes on a cookie sheet and, through the miracle of quantum plasto-physics, your creations shrink to approximately 44% of their original size! Yes, I know—amazing. But wait, it gets better. Now, with the help of a handy-dandy hole punch and a custom shaping tool, kids can finally layer their creations and curve their teeny tiny plastic art like never before. With more than 50 traceable designs and 55 brads, they’ll be shrinking and linking, over and over again.

Need a visual? Watch me Shrink & Link here:

 
I kept mixing and matching, and before I knew it I had a limitless wardrobe of “did-you-really-make-that?!” jewelry. Check out my designs!

 

Who knows, maybe I’ll be dubbed the Ultimate Klutz Crafter sometime soon. Maybe not. In either case, happy National Craft Month!

Colour Me Surprised

In my crafting life, I've come to accept that drawing is my Achilles heel. No matter how many times I try to draw a face or sketch out scenery, I quickly remember that it's not my forte.

 

For Spring Break this year, I have two things on my to do list: re-watch the entire Star Wars saga, and get better at drawing. I’ll tell you more about that first goal in another post, but this week it's all about rehabilitating the pour soul who created this into someone who might be able to tackle this.

First, I dug into my magic box of Klutz and pulled out two kits to guide me in the right direction. I warmed up with Splat Art. This kooky book is packed with all sorts of splatted, stamped and squashed things that you can re-imagine into something new. I made a sponge print into the "Knight Bus," turned some string art into yummy cotton candy and (okay, so technically this one isn't drawing) I transformed an looping ribbon into a miniature royal decree.

Once I had mastered the Splat, it was time to move onto something a little more challenging (relatively speaking, of course.) Because, with pre-printed backgrounds and an amazing fold-out book (so you can flip the drawing instructions right out front of you), it doesn't get much easier than Mix & Match Drawing. Still, this is me we’re talking about, so I was skeptical at first.

Turns out I’m not so bad! I may have struggled to keep things to scale (that knight should probably be a bit smaller than his fire-breathing foe), but the step-by-step, shape-by-shape directions held my hand till the end. I sat back to discover that I had drawn something pretty decent. Sure, there were a couple of small gaffes, but I’m getting better! And that’s more than I’ve ever been able to say before.

One goal well on it's way to completion and one left to go.
What are your goals for Spring Break this year?