Charms made from Number 6 plastic

Sharon over at http://www.mystoryart.com/ has got us thinking recycle. Those of you who follow my blog KNOW I spend very little money on projects, and I do that by recycling everything I get my hands on. This was not one of the things Sharon asked for hints to reuse, although she talked about "clear plastic blister packaging," which I have no idea what it is.

So I'm planning to make some charms for a swap and I decided to get out my number 6 plastic, along with my Sizzex and die. Now before I got these wonderful tools as gifts from my dear friend Kat, I would have simply cut them with the scissors that I used to cut the plastic into pieces that would go through the die cutter.

Obviously, I didn't have enough plastic in that one container to make all the charms I wanted, so I used a few pieces that a friend had given me. There was no number on the plastic, as she had cut the plastic into pieces, but I always tell people NUMBER 6 is the only plastic I want. Unfortunately, some people don't seem to care and cut the number off so I won't know they have given me something I can't use.

After I cut all the pieces, I was ready to decorate them using a rubber stamp, staz-on, watercolor markers, and stencils. I stamped on the craft sheet that I knew I would need for the next step.
Here is what three of them look like after they were stamped, stenciled, and outlined in gold leaf pen.
I used a bamboo stick (flat end in hole) and my heat gun to shrink these. Yep, my fingers and hands are still a lovely blue!!!

Here is a GREAT example of what number six plastic does and what other number plastics do. I had a devil of a time with many of these. They folded, they turned white, they melted, they distorted, but they didn't shrink!!!
But the number six plastic, which I cut from the container shown above, worked like a charm (no pun intended). And the really neat thing is, when they shrunk, the gold leafing was all around the outside of each charm. Very cool indeed, and the effect I was hoping for.

Now I need to find more Number 6 plastic, and I'll be back in business.