Holy cow, what a challenge!

It's time for another challenge at Guylou's Inimitability, and what a challenge it is! Well, at least, it was a challenge for me. This time around, our wonderful shop owner and the creator behind Guylou's Inimitability digi stamps, Guylou herself, hosted our challenge. She likes to push the limits of creativity, I think. Rather than just doing a color challenge OR an "anything but a card" challenge, she decided to do them both at once. In other words, it's time for an Anything but a card color challenge! Whoa.

Here's the colors you get to play with:

For most people, I guess that wouldn't be an issue. The colors are beautiful, bright, happy and cool, all at the same time. However, I tend to create with more subdued colors, or maybe it's just that I'm in a vintage/shabby chic mood. Either way, this color palette really challenged me. To top it off, I wasn't allowed to make a card. Sheesh...talking about testing my imagination and creativity. I guess that's why they call it a "challenge."

I came up with this idea to make something using my shrinky dink plastic. At first, I attempted a magnet, but I used the wrong type of shrinky dink paper. The ink from my printer ran all over the place. Oops. So, I paid attention to what I was doing the next time around and grabbed the inkjet shrinky dink plastic. I intended to make a ring, but the image didn't shrink as much as I thought it would, so it became a pin instead. I used Ben. Check it out:

Here's how I did it:
Step 1. Crop the image and size it bigger than you need. The package says it will shrink to about a third of its size. I don't think it shrank that much. Then again, I suck at eyeballing these things.
Step 2. Print the image out on INKJET shrinky dink plastic. It is very important that you use the Inkjet kind, or the ink will run.
Step 3. Color with a stayfast medium, like copics. The colors will change slightly when they heat up. Mine got less vivid. I promise that I started out with the bright colors of the challenge.
Step 4. Cut around the image in the shape you want. This can't be done after you put the stuff in the oven, so do it now! If you want to make a charm, don't forget to hole punch the image at this point, too.
Step 5. Bake at 325 degrees for 1-3 minutes.
Step 6. Pull image from oven and hold wax paper flat over image for about 15 seconds, to flatten out any residual curling.
Step 7. Once image is cooled, add a pin back, ring, or other jewelry fastener/notion. This is also the time to add any embellishment, like the rhinestone I put on my pin. If you don't have a pin back, use some strong glue and attach a safety pin to the back.

It's quick, it's easy, and it's fun! Who doesn't want to head back to childhood and play with markers and shrinky dinks???

You have until August 18th at 10:00 p.m. EST to enter this challenge. Random draw will choose a winner to get a $5 gift card to G's store, as well as the opportunity to be a guest DT on a future challenge! Let's see how creative YOU can get!