Shrink Plastic Ducklings Card

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This cheerful card makes a great new baby card, but by changing the worded messages could easily be adapted to make it suitable for a child's birthday.

Materials

• A sheet of white pre-sanded shrink plastic
• Stamposaurus Clear Stamp, Duck Walking
• Embossing pens (we used pale aqua, spring green, yellow and tangerine)
• Aqua-Flo Brushes
• Colouring pencils (we used watercolour pencils)
• Stazon Large Ink Pad, Jet Black
• Watercolour paper
• An A6 card blank
• A sheet of pink card (we used textured card in Peony)
• Mini-mounting pads
• All purpose glue
• Fingerlift double sided tape
• A trimmer or craft knife, mat and steel edged ruler
• A pair of scissors

You will also need a heat gun or use of an oven, to shrink the shrink plastic.

Instructions

1. The first step is to make the small duck embellishments.

Stamp two of the walking ducks onto a sheet of white pre-sanded shrink plastic, using black StazOn ink, leaving enough space around them to cut them out. Allow the ink to dry completely, then colour in the duck using watercolour pencils. Cut out each duck, leaving a white border around each one. Shrink the plastic, following the instructions on the packet (we find it easier to control when we shrink it in the oven).

2. The next step is to stamp and colour in the large duck.

We have used watercolour paper for this, because you can colour in the image with a water based ink without damaging the surface of the paper, but any good quality card-stock will do. Cut out a piece of your card so it cover the front of your card blank (we will stick it onto the front of the card later).

Stamp the duck onto the card, leaving enough room for your little ducklings to follow along behind.

Using an embossing pen, scribble on an acrylic block or plate. Add some water with a paintbrush or aqua-flow brush and mix. Test out the colour and strength on an off-cut of card. To make the colour more vivid, add more ink, or to make it paler, add more water. You can get different shades this way and mix more than one pen colour to get a particular shade. If you have not used this technique before, we would recommend trying it out on a rough piece of the watercolour paper first. Colour in your duck and then shade in the background and leave your masterpiece to dry!

3. We now need to make the pink wording strips...

This is as easy as printing your wording onto a sheet of pink card and cutting it out. We have used '.....Congratulations.....Great News......Yippee.....', as we wanted to use the card for a friend's new baby, though you can use any wording you like (this design makes a great children's birthday card for example). You may need to adjust the font size to fit the card blank.

Using a trimmer or a craft knife, ruler and mat, cut out several strips (you will probably need 4) of the same width. We cut out quite thin strips, about 1cm (3/8") wide, so that there was some space above and below the duck.

4. The last step is to put it all together!

Stick double sided tape around the edges of the card blank and a couple of strips across the centre and stick the watercolour paper to the card blank. Use a craft knife, mat and ruler to trim the top of your picture so that it doesn't overlap the card blank. You can cut the picture to size first using a trimmer if you find this easier. Position the wording strips around the edge of the card blank and cut them to size and stick them down using an all purpose glue or double sided tape.

Finally, decide where your two ducks are going to go. Stick them down with glue or double sided tape. We have used mini mounting pads on the middle duck, so that it is slightly raised.

All done!