What Luck of the Irish?

Artistically speaking there is a school of thought that, "How can you know if you've gone too far if you haven't gone far enough".

Everything I touched this week has been a specter of that expression.
I have been near madness multiple times with everything I touched this week:  a wedding gift that won't be wrapped, my Iron Craft projects(both of them), even just trying to keep track of my Michael's coupon.

So, I can't speak of the luck of the Irish, even though I'm only partly Irish.  I would have thought that counted for something.  However, the only luck I seem to be having is in not catching anything on fire...yet.

Example Numero Uno: Iron Craft 11-project 1.
The theme was green.  No I didn't want to think 'out of the box'; I figured I'd enjoy making something kitschy for St. Patrick's day.  Besides you can only wear the party-store Shamrock earrings and the plastic ring that came off of last year's cupcake for so long.

I dug back to the 1960's Disney gem, Darby O'Gill and the Little People for inspiration.

Of course I like that movie!

There is a dark and stormy night and a Banshee and the Coiste Bodhar make oh so creepy appearances.  True, it scared the crap out of me when I was little but there was always something cool about that part.

So for this project I grabbed a T-shirt from Goodwill.  And scoured online for decent Darby O' Gill images.
So far so good.  I even found a screen-shot from an extra that was a Disney badge looking graphic that says, "I caught the King of the Leprechauns".

This really should have been easy...

But I didn't think to flip the image so that the writing would come out correctly.
I figured that little gem out AFTER printing the main image for the back and the 'badge' for the front.  The badge however, was small enough that I could print a redo on the same sheet.

Have no fear!  I had 1 piece of Iron-On paper left...

Too bad the printer ran blue streaks down the right side of the sheet.

*^#%*^&@&*(#$*%$^
I mean "Thats ok, I'll just cut away most of the green! It's a green t-shirt after all."

Yah!!!

Then I touched the iron.

I touched the iron to the design after it took FOREVER to get the cut away pieces to stay down.

*#$^%&#%~*^@#%@! ~
I mean, "Thats ok, it'll be cute with the vintagey-worn look.  Hmm, maybe not, I'll just use the left over backing and the iron to go back over that rough spot, & that spot, & that spot, & that spot."

I think I saved it though.  At this point I'm so tired of staring at it that I'm pretty convinced that I saved it.

But I being a mere mortal, was not content to screw up just one project.  Oh no, next I offer you frustration - uh, project # 2.  A ring in kind.

I found this cool ring at Target on clearance.

And immediately I thought, I could just take some of those Darby O'Gill pics and print them on shrink plastic, cut that little sucker out and glue it to the ring.

Well...it kind of worked.
 When they were in the oven, I got nervous because they curled up.  So I freaked and thought, well, I'll try those again later.  But I read about the curling problem and found that I probably didn't give them enough time.  So back in they went.

They turned out must better than at first but they were a little too big.  So another batch was printed.  This time the Banshee came out a bit too dull.  But in the 2nd run they shrunk right down.

King Brian however continued to curl, even though I tried the hint to place a piece of parchment paper over the shrink plastic to help keep it from rolling up.  I eventually got that piece to lay flat but noticed a small split in the side.  I don't know if that was from my trim job or my attempt to get that piece to lay flat.

But these pieces were definitely a better size.  So one of these puppies was getting a fancy ride.  So I checked them both out on the ring.  I decided I should color the Banshee's edges - the white was a bit too stark.  While I fixed the edges I decided to brighten her back up.

I gave them both another look on the ring but was still torn.
Unable to decide a clear front runner, I Modge Podged them both.

Head: : Desk.

The Modge Podge on King Brian smeared some of the ink.  He looked like a Gaelic Line Backer, the green smeared under his eye on one side.  Again, with some finagling I think I saved it.

So after a lot of fixes I realized that all these little boo-boos are just another set of tools.  Tools that won't take up any room.  Next time, I'll know just how far to go.

I'll know just how far I can push a piece of shrink plastic and just how far away my iron needs to stay away from an exposed transfer.

And until I decide whether to make a King Brian ring or a Banshee ring I at least have a cool t-shirt to go with that ring from last year's cupcake.

  

The Winter Film Capital of the World, 1910s

So the Iron Craft Challenge 8 this week was to make something to represent your hometown.  I love where I'm from and when I started planning out my project I realized there were quite a few possibilities to represent my little city.  The Blue Angels started here.  We are surrounded by historic sites like the wreck of the Maple Leaf, Harriet Beecher Stowe's House not to mention multiple forts and historic sites.  And of course there are quirky things like our 7 main bridges and being the home of the Elvis hit, Heartbreak Hotel.

I really loved the idea of using charms so I wouldn't have to pick just one thing.

But out of all the vintage pictures of hotels, parks & statues I ended up finding a completely different direction.

Film.

Yep, film.  The Winter Film Capital of the World to be exact.

Well in the 1910's.

So I made a charms out of Shrink Plastic with some of the images I was able to find from our techni-color past.

Honestly, I loved using the shrink plastic but it can be a little tricky.  The instructions let you know up front the images need to be lightened which can make cutting the images down tricky.  (The cut pieces below were not my lightened images but my full color 1st run.)  You can't use the images at full opacity.  As they shrink the ink gets too thick and in some cases blurry and it may not dry even after baking.

But the other issue is figuring out just how small your image can go and still be legible.  A lot of the images I found really started out too small to use for this project since they were smaller than an inch.  I ended up using stills and posters that were around 2 inches to start.

Everything turned out.  I used a bracelet that was already in my stash and removed a few of the beads already there.  I left a few since I felt like it still needed a little sparkle.

All in all I have a cool little piece of hometown history as a new bauble.  There is something really cool about that.