My Charm Story

I have this awesome idea in my head for an altered art project. But to do it, I need some various charms. Of course I could buy some, but I of course, thought I'd make my own.

However, my first attempt didn't quite turn out the way I'd hoped. I had wanted to make shrink plastic charms with silver Solder around it. But as you'll see, it didn't work out. So Instead, I made some altered dice charms. Here's my story in pictures:

The shrink film I used. I did some with clear film, and some with matte.( I'll list all the products I used at the end of this post.)

I cut the shrink film into smaller squares using a square punch:

I used alcohol inks to color my shrink plastic:

I used a hole punch to punch a hole so they could be used as charms:

I decided to emboss them with a stamp and embossing powder:

I figured I could heat my embossing powder and shrink the film at the same time:

This is right after heating:

As you can see, the stamp was a little too intricate and there was too much powder for the stars to come out clean.

So I decided to draw a squiggly line design with colored sharpies:

After they'd been heated:

And on chains:

At this point, I still wanted to add the solder around the edges of my plastic squares.

So I super glued the solder around the charms so I wouldn't have to hold both things.

But apparently, solder doesn't really stick to plastic. 

And so this is what I ended up with:

As you can see, it looks like I started getting into the groove of it on the last edge. But it was extremely difficult and some adjustments are definitely needed.

And so, frustrated, I put that aside for now till I come up with a better way. (Btw, if ANYONE has any ideas on a better way to do that, I am all ears.)

And so, I moved on to altering some good, old fashioned dice (sort of old fashioned):

Since I eventually needed to hand them from a chain, I needed to add a loop thing.

So I got my drill out, and drilled a hole right into the one:

I left the hole alone for now and I gathered some supplies to alter my dice and make them pretty:

After they were all embellished, I added super glue gel to my drilled hole:

I added a Tim Holtz screw eye into the hole:

After it dried, I added a jump ring and a chain and there you go!

Here are my altered dice charms:

And again, with my plastic guys:

And that's the end of my charm saga. Any questions?