A Small Consolation

September 19, 2010

By way of trying to make up to you the lack of C&C show yesterday, I want to share with you a little something you can do with your transfer foils other than colour the reverse of your Friendly Plastic. 

But before I do, there have been a few comments and emails wondering what actually happened about the show yesterday, so here is what I posted to the Friendly Plastic List on Yahoo Groups (see link in side bar)  to try and set the record straight.

I am so sorry to have disappointed you all about the show on Create and Craft.  The postponement happened late on Friday afternoon, and was absolutely nothing to do with me.  I was all ready to roll, but other circumstances arose between the company I am demonstrating for and Create and Craft  that meant a postponement was the solution to the problem.    

 Just to set the record straight, I am not appearing on behalf of Rare Bird Ltd, but another company.  although the kits are largely divised by me (not entirely as the company has the final say), and they do have my instructions in them, and I do supply some components such as the DVD, they are not “mine”.  Therefore all administration issues and negotiations etc are not done by me, so I have no control over things.  Consequently, when I say it was beyond  my control, I really mean it, I had nothing to do with it and I was just as miffed as you about the show being postponed. 

 he worst thing for me is the feeling that I have let you all down, led you astray and generally hacked you off.  So, once again I apologise for this, but hopefully I should hear some news next week about what is happening.

 By the way, thank you Rose for your concern, but I am honestly absolutely fine, miffed but fine!

Now that is over and done with, let me show you a simple little trick to add a design and some extra colour to a plain stick of FP.  All you need is a sheet of transfer foils, a needle tool and a heat gun.

Score into the front surface of some Friendly Plastic (I used black) using the needle tool.  You need to do this quite decisively and clearly.  Then heat it with the heat gun for about 15 seconds and apply your transfer foils (silver in the picture).  Use a tissue or a cloth to rub the foil down and allow it to cool completely.  When you remove the transfer foil the scratched pattern will be revealed in silver.  You can use he patterned piece in any way you would use ordinary FP.

Why stick to only one colour of transfer foil.  If you scratch another design,  you can add another colour of foil.

It is much easier to scratch straight lines than curvy ones, at least it is with a regular needle tool.  If  you try other pointy tools you might be able to become quite fluid in your scratches.

I know this is not a very lovely drawing – it takes me back to my primary school days, but it illustrates the point that you can of course reuse the foil with the image to apply to the reverse of a stick of FP.  I applied the silver foil that I had used to add the Christmas Tree to the black FP to the back of another stick.  This leaves the Christmas Tree as a black line on silver coated FP.  Then I applied gold foil to colour the black line gold.

That last comment might just become clearer when you look at the foils on either side of the FP in the above picture.

The only thing to remember is that the transfer foils will not stick where there is no sticky FP showing through it’s own foil coating.  therefore you have to scratch off the surface to reveal the raw FP beneath.  If you use the reverse of a stick of FP then you do not need to scratch the surface, simply apply the foil.  I have produced a video short on how to do this very thing, there is a link to it on the side bar.

I have made some beads using this colouring technique and my Tubead Kit.

I used a twisting action to get the slightly wonky look; this also had the benefit of making any seam coil around the bead.

The ends of each bead are coloured with transfer foil too.

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