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Okay, I have used the cheap crap polyshrink from my kids craft drawer with reasonable success. I have a demo next weekend, and bought the SU polyshrink for the workshop I am doing, and I am pulling my hair out - I have tried both classic and stazon on ink - both bleed and smear when I dont sand, and when I do sand they bleed into the sanding lines. I am really getting frustrated. What am I doing wrong?
Definitely check out the luckysquirrel site mentioned above. If your ink pads are too wet, you may have smearing problems. A light touch is best with not a huge amount of ink on the stamp. Craft ink will not adhere to the shrink until baked. Stazon will dry, drying time depends on the ambient humidity in your location. I live in a semi-arid place and never have issues with stazon drying but I have friends in coastal areas that do have wait it out. I never sand the shrink anymore just for the reason you stated--bleeding into the marks.
Hello-
Make sure that you don't have too much ink on your stamp.... I don't push down into the stamp pad, I move the stamp back and forth in a scrubbing-type movement(lightly). Also, any mistakes reduce in size and become less visible as the plastic shrinks.
Remember that the ink will become much darker/more intense as the plastic shrinks, and if you are trying to match an ink color it may get too dark, so I did a little experimenting and I have found that you can even stamp a second time (sometimes) and get a lighter image, which when shrunk becomes more intense and then more like the actual color of ink.
Hope this helps, Debbie
If you don't get carried away, you can actually take your heat gun and dry the StazOn. That's what I do. Just don't hold the heat gun too close, and be sure to move it around a lot. I usually hold the heat on the plastic for a few seconds, then wave the plastic around to cool it, then hit it again. Repeat till it's dry. If you try this a couple of times, you'll find it really easy.
Another hint you may already know about. I had very little success with shrinking the pieces in the oven till someone told me to put them on a piece of cardboard. It made a HUGE difference. I went from about a 50% success rate to a 99% success rate for finished pieces.
For really big things, like Wonderful Wings butterflies, I still cook them in my little ol' Shrinky Dink oven.
I found my ink was bleeding into the sanding lines, now I make sure to sand top to bottom, then left to right, then around in circles ( all lightly), this prevents obvious lines from happening. Then I stamp with staz on, let it dry a minute, then I can colour without any problem.
Polyshrink Help
