Adventures In Acrylic

For my daughter's Christmas present, I made her this "mixed media" book. It is acrylic pieces I picked up at The Yard Store in Wichita, Kansas four about $.15 each. These are 9 1/2 inches wide by 5 1/2 inches deep - EXCLUDING the leg things.

These pieces of acrylic are cast off pieces (trash) from some project done by a manufacturing company. The people at The Yard Store acquire stuff all the time. Mostly tools, but they do have some gems hidden amongst the "stuff".

Someone may know what stamp pad ink to use on acrylic. I do not. I used what I have in my stash - mostly permanent ink pads - and they DID NOT dry. The ink was still wet three days later, and after I used the heat gun on it to "set" the ink.

Also, heat embossing is tricky on this. If you use fine powder stuff (like black or silver), all the little bits that don't get off with the initial banging and flicking will need to be brushed off with a paint brush. However - I did find a fix for the problem. Rubbing alcohol - Isopropyl Alcohol - will take it right off. I am serious. It will take off all the hard work you just did. My cover page ended up going through a bit of a total makeover when I found I could remove the heat embossed mess I had made.

Using the heat gun on this acrylic. After a while the acrylic will bend and begin to bow. Not good. The acrylic piece is VERY HOT and it is pliable. I had to put it down on my craft table and find the coolest spots around the bow and press down. I had to work my way towards the center of the bow to get the piece flat again. Lots of "ooooch, ouch, hot hot hot" mutterings went on while I did this. I'm not sure what would have happened had I just left it alone. It may have flattened itself out as it cooled. I didn't want to take the chance of it not working.

I have some course embossing powders by Personal Stamp Exchange in the Tapestry line. That worked out really well on the last acrylic piece on the outside.

I had my husband drill the three holes along the edges of three pieces of acrylic. He's my "Go to guy" when I need stuff like this done. I have tried to drill acrylic before and I have cracked it and made a huge mess. I knew he had the proper tools and expertise to do this job so I enlisted his help.

Okay, now a little bit of a heads up. I did not have a "plan" in mind of what I was going to do with this project. I knew I wanted to use the acrylic and maybe some papers, and I had a stack of pictures I wanted to use. That was the extent of my planning.

I didn't take into consideration that PAPER TEARS when ribbon or wire is worked through it. The opening and closing of the book would cause the paper to stress at the holes and all my work would be junk. I figured that out after I had the pages built. So I glued 1 1/8 wide ribbon on the edges and used clothing grommets through the ribbon and the paper to make a better whats-is.

If you plan on making something like this USE REALLY STRONG CARDSTOCK. Or at the very least, sandwich a piece of chipboard between your decorative papers. Give the pages some substance and not flimsy.

I love, love, love this photo. My daughter and her girlfriend took their spouses on a cruise. This was one of the photos they had taken before the formal dinner. I just love it.

Oh, while I'm at it. When you make something with clear acrylic - there is a backside to it. Duh. I had the front side looking pretty good. I looked at the back saw all of the glue dots and smears from attaching the burlap. Yes, I can't believe it came as a surprise to me either.

I got to paw through my stash of stickers and decorative tags to cover stuff up.


The little picture at the top left is my daughter's girlfriend and her husband. "Come here you wild thing you!" I thought this was so cute.

I have some stickers with these little kid like figures. There are x's and o's all over the page. I got them from Ebay one time when I was in the midst of a buying frenzy. Don't ask me why I thought these little guys were so cute that I had to have them. I don't know. Now I have to find things to use them in.

While I was "auditioning" them on the page, they stuck. Crap. So no background paper was used. I used some of my pens and made the "stitch" dashes around the figures. Turned out kinda cute.

This scrapbook thing is a learning process for me. You can see from this page where I used the 1 1/8 inch ribbon and the clothing grommets for a sturdier edge. I glued the ribbon down real good and pinched the devil out of the grommets so they wouldn't go anywhere.


This page I traced the flowers from a thing from Club Scrap. I have no idea what color the flowers are in real life but I thought these colors were pretty. The two oval words are from my stash and fit in the blank space between the flower and the dotted border.

The "Tabs" are from a set of stickers I have from 7 Gypsies I bought in Sparks, Nevada one time. There is a scrapbook store about three blocks away from the hotel we were staying in. I had to go check it out. Like I said in an earlier post - I am a paperholic and I have to get my fix where ever I can.

In Wichita, Kansas is a little store on Kellog street (I think) called the Scrapbook Garden. I can loose myself in that store for hours. I've find scrapbook stores in nearly every state we travel through. When we have a few days downtime and I can wonder around I find a place to take pictures, or I find a scrapbook store.


The cute sticker at the top left is a cloth sticker from Club Scrap in their "Textiles & Notions" collection. I just have the stickers. I had to touch it and rub it for a while before I pulled if off its backing paper. I could not believe it was fabric.

Yes, I know - "It doesn't take much to entertain and idiot".

My daughter's girlfriend got married in Hawaii. So cool. I'd go to Hawaii anytime - if I didn't have to go over WATER. Yes, you can all chime in now "bok, bok, bok" (chicken noises).


This was where I found out that permanent ink doesn't dry on this kind of acrylic. Yes, you are seeing the backside of this swirl image. I thought this was just the coolest thing I've seen. The view of the previous page through the swirl.

What I ended up doing - since the ink would not dry - was use Glassy Accents over the silver ink. When the Glassy Accents dried I figured the silver ink would be there for ever.






Okay, this is the end. Go have some fun with acrylic stuff.