5 brooches Part 6- the 4 brooches handmade by me edition

You've been party to my brooch parties over the last couple of weeks (well, month really).

A little while back, I shared 3 shrink plastic brooches I had made so it was with interest that I relocated the shrink plastic a couple of weeks ago and decided to give the drawing, colouring and shrinking routine a little go again.  The results are below.

I'll talk through them a bit (because I am like that- sorry if you like to think for yourself- I like discussing my reasoning for actions)

The first one I made was the popcorn brooch and sadly, it went wrong.

You can see the stages of making it below.

1.  Drawing my design, 2. Tracing it onto the shrink plastic, 3.  Colouring it in with watercolour pencils.  4. Using a paintbrooch with water to make the colours more solid, 5. Going round the outlines to give it a cartoony quality.

And stage 6.

Trying to use my heat gun to shrink it. I should just stick to the oven.  I panicked when I shrank it as it curled up on itself for longer than it usually does, not resuming a flat position. I frantically tried to flatten it with a paintbrush-end and mat, reheated it too many times and frankly burnt it.

 I eventually managed to get it to lay a bit flatter but it does look a bit decrepid above and the colours have sort of cracked. Plus, the people who say that plain pencil disappears when you shrink it are plain liars as you can clearly see my pencil lines through the paint where the scallops are. Humph!
I MIGHT try to make this again OR I might just put up with a manky brooch!

 The second one is of course, a tea-cup. I love tea and I felt this would be a cute and easy brooch to make myself. It was.  I put a Cath Kidstonesque design on it based on something I saw on l'internet and this time, I didn't paint the pencils, just left them to do their own thing. Oh, and I used the oven so it laid perfectly flat! Hurrah! I do believe this is the best of the lot!

You can see the colours before shrinking.  Shrinking the plastic intensifies the colours.

 The next brooch is INCREDIBLY geeky, a bit 'in-joke-ish' or a bit 'Freemasonesque' (as it in secret handshake!)   I'll tell you why.
I love the composer, Dmitri Shostakovitch.  He lived in Communist Russia and he had a really difficult time of it being a composer during that regime.  So many stoppers were put on his creativity but miraculously, he managed to avoid getting too much into trouble or defecting like many Russian composers.
Anyway, in his symphonies, he created a motif (that's a small music ideal, often only consisting of less than 8 notes- it's not a TUNE, it's a little idea- like the Da Da da DAAA of Beethoven's 5th symphony) which was essentially the musical version of his name.
D S C H (short of Dmitri Shostakovitch).

D= note D
S= note E flat (not sure why)
C= note C
H= Note B (again,not sure why)


It is instantly recognisable in his music and in the 10th symphony which I played this summer, it featured over and over again!  Anytime I've ever written reveille wakeup music at music camp, I've always used Shostakovitch's motif and I thought a cute little brooch showing it would be funny, to see how someone who knows the motif would react. Though probably, I've got the rhythm lengths wrong!  Again, you can see below, the design prior to shrinkage.

 The final design was done alongside the disastrous popcorn brooch.I had this tiny scrap of shrink plastic,not really fit for much so I decided to experiment and just draw some colouring pencils in the small bit of plastic.  They at least went flat but the colours went all grainy. They are super tiny, about 1.5 cm long and 5mm wide!

And here's the complete collection, I forgot to snap the brooch backs, but that's not really what you wanted to see was it!??!

Linking to Creative Mondays with Claire Justine