Friendly Plastic Embellishments and a Birthday Card

I’ve been busy today making things out of Friendly Plastic Pellets, but first of all, here is the card I made for my aunt’s birthday, which I finished today.

For the background I used Core-dinations paper, Whitewash collection in pink, embossed with Tim Holtz Alterations Texture Fades "Rays" embossing folder, sanded to reveal the "core" colour of card. It was distressed with Aged Mahogany distress ink. A small piece of the same card was ripped into several pieces and overlaid. The flowers were stamped with my Fantasy Florals stamps using Vintage Photo, Spiced Marmalade and Mustard Seed distress inks, cut out and hand embossed, and glued down with Pinflair glue. The centres were accented with a Uniball Signo broad UM-153 white pigment ink pen and glossy accents. The white pen mixed with the underlying ink – if you wanted to retain the pure white, you would have to seal the surface first, but I quite liked the effect. The leaves were left over from a previous project – they were cut on Jiminy Cricut and hand embossed, and coloured with Perfect Pearls. The sentiment was on pink textured card distressed with Aged Mahogany distress ink, stamped in the same colour, and matted on orange card distressed with Spiced Marmalade. The whole design was matted and layered onto orange card distressed with Spiced Marmalade, and pink card distressed with Aged Mahogany. Inside, I distressed the pink card with Aged Mahogany, and added a little Spiced Marmalade in the centre of each side. The card has a nice textured feel, but the embellishments are not too thick, or made of anything that would be damaged in the post.

After I’d finished the card, I started on the Most Fun I’ve Had for Ages!! I set up my skillet and began melting Friendly Plastic pellets. For anyone who doesn’t know what these are, they are part of the Friendly Plastic range – most Friendly Plastic comes in flexible strips of various colours and finishes, which can be cut up and made into jewellery, card toppers, or whatever you like. Friendly Plastic is a low-melting plastic, and will soften in water at about 60 degrees Centigrade. The pellets are plain white, and come in a jar. When you pour them into hot water, they begin to melt together – initially they start to look a bit like frogspawn, and then they become completely transparent, at which point they can be removed with a pointed tool, the water squeezed out, and the resulting lump of putty-like plastic can be rolled out, embossed, stamped, broken into smaller pieces and made into things or pressed into moulds – whatever you like. It cools and hardens fairly quickly, and you can speed up the process by putting it into a cold water bath. If it starts to harden before you’ve finished, or you don’t like what you’ve done, you simply put it back in the hot water and start again. Friendly Plastic sticks to itself, and you can use every little piece so there is never any waste. I have to say it’s the most astonishing stuff!

As you know, I’ve been making moulds recently, and I’ve made quite a few moulds of gears, bolt heads, nuts, screws etc. etc. for a steampunk look. My dad also lent me some clock gears and a couple of clock hands which I wasn’t sure would be any good because they were very delicate and fine, but I gave them a try and managed to make some nice moulds of them.

When I moulded the Friendly Plastic into them, I was amazed how well they came out. As you will see from the photos, even the very delicate small clock hand came out perfectly!

Here are the finished pieces I made from the moulds today, in their raw white form. I had also made some moulds from various charms and bits of jewellery, and moulded some of those too, but my main aim today was the steampunk bits.

Here they are with a layer of black gesso painted on, in preparation for a faux metal/rust effect. Suddenly they look a lot more convincing!

Here’s a detailed shot of some of them, and you can see what I mean about the clock hands, and the degree of detail that was picked up by both the mould, and the Friendly Plastic. Even the stamping on the bolt heads has been faithfully preserved! The screw heads look less like pills now they have been painted!

I can’t do any more until I get some more mould making putty. I am waiting to hear from a company as to whether their stuff is going to be suitable for my needs. The seller of the unsuccessful stuff has taken it back and I got a refund today, so I am keen to get on and obtain some more as I’ve used up all my Mold-n-Pour. I need to make a few larger pieces.

I tried making a few pieces using air-dry clay in the moulds but it wasn’t nearly as successful as the Friendly Plastic. I shall probably keep that for larger pieces that I can stamp out using my cookie cutters and cake icing moulds.

I’ve also got some shrink plastic and am looking forward to making some pieces from that, heat embossing and shrinking in one go with the heat gun.

This has to be one of the most fun things I’ve done for ages. It’s so creative and rewarding, and the results are so good! I’d recommend it to anyone to try.