everybody its Courtney from creativebug and we're live like we always are on Tuesdays and Thursdays this is the first time you're joining us you can follow us if you're following along on your phone or mobile device and that way you'll get a notification every time we go live be sure to like and share our page and if you miss something that we've posted either today you join us a little bit later or maybe you want to check something that we posted before you can always see that on our videos tab and on CB TV and today I thought I would do something that appeals to my sort of six-year-old self I've been feeling like being an adult is really hard recently and so I thought I would play with some shrinky dinks and show you how to make a really cute cake topper now this is the perfect topper for cupcakes or any cake so if you haven't checked out any of our Wilton's classes you totally should and we're doing a promo where you can put in face book 30 and get 30 free days of creativebug that gives you access to all 700 plus of our classes you can enjoy those Wilton classes step up your cake decorating game your baking game you can learn how to make those perfect cupcakes I know schools back in session now so a lot of kids birthday parties are happening so you could do these little cake toppers and you can reuse them year after year which is really fun the materials you'll need for this are some shrinky dink film or paper and this is really special it's sort of like a type of plastic usually comes in a package of eight-and-a-half by 11 sheets and there are several kinds there's a clear kind where it's just a clear acetate looking sheet clear on both sides the one that I love to use is called rough-and-ready and one side is clear and the back is sanded that's what they describe it as it's a rough texture slightly frosted and this allows me to use both permanent marker and colored pencil which gives us a really pretty and kind of artistic look which I'm going to show you how to do in just a minute and this is my preferred type of shrinky dink and I've been making these with my friends Sanjay and Jenny every time we do mini-course every year we work with a bunch of teenagers to make shrinky dink jewelry if you've never made shrinky dink jewelry we also have a class for that that's taught by a Nicole Blum and not the link for that's going to be posted in just a minute so you're going to need some of these this is ideal for a toaster oven project but you could also do this in your regular oven every shrinky dink film will have instructions on the baking on the back so just make sure your depending on which kind of film you're using you follow those baking instructions it's also nice to have a little bit of parchment paper I'm using some from Wilton's which I love us have a little spatula handy and then some kind of grippers or some kind of pot holder because you are going to be taking this baking tray out of the toaster oven or out of the oven while it's warm so you need to have these on hand and there are a few little troubleshooting tips I'm going to share with you along the way so having something to protect your fingertips is really handy also have a bunch of really fun colored pencils I've got a whole array of sharpies that I can use and then I also have a couple of these like coffee stirrers and you'll see when we'd make our shrinky dinks sometimes they will always they curl up and then they relax and there's this tiny moment of panic where things look like they might be sticking and if you need to fuss a little you can use one of these without burning your fingertips and get in there and make everything lie flat now you do have to preheat your oven at least that's what it recommends on the back of the shrink eating film so that's we're going to do to start I just have a basic toaster oven I have the tray that we're going to put our shrinky dinks on out of the oven and I'm just going to turn the dial the temperature is set to 325 which is what's recommended on my package so you might hear some ticking because that's how this toaster oven works I just want this going so it's warming well we're going to work on our image now the cool thing about this frosted is that you can still see through it which means I can trace an image this is ideal for people who can't draw but really want to make a cute cake topper and I think working with vintage imagery is really fun or things from kids book illustrations things like vintage kids books also work really nicely so I have Peter Cottontail here I think I want to do this tiger and I'm going to Center him in the middle of the page now I could try to economize and do this on the side and that's fine too but I'm actually going to add some little tabs at the bottom of his feet so that there is a permanent place for this to stick into the cake so I don't have to add anything else I have to glue any toothpicks onto the bottom of my image I'm just going to make it part of my full image so one leave a little more room I'm starting with just a black sharpie and I'm drawing on the glossy side so that's important you could do a line you can do sketchy lines we're going to be cutting this out so you'll need some sharp scissors and we're going to be I like to cut outside of the line not on the line so that I can retain some more sketchy marks but if you want to do just a solid line that's fine too not being too precious about this I like the sketchy look of this oh yeah guys Brian's reminding me that we're live which means you can write in and ask questions so feel free to do so you're joining us now like and share the Facebook page so you get notifications you can hit that follow button on your mobile device that way you never miss a live shoot and if you did miss it you can go back and watch it on our videos tab or on CB t CB TV and I am making a shrinky dink cake topper and right now I'm using my frosted shrinky dink film and a vintage image of a tiger if you have any questions just let us know and Alison will ask them to me and then I'll repeat them and then hopefully answer your questions sometimes people have questions about what kind of imagery you can use you can look on Pinterest and on Google for copyright free imagery there's something called graphics berry which has a lot of fun vintage clipart that you can use I found this image just under free clipart vintage tiger and you owned it tiger Allison said there's a question excellent question Cynthia thank you for asking this question the question was how much is this going to shrink the packaging says that this will shrink about a third of the original image but just to give you a hint where we're headed that's my tiger he's not fully drawn but if you look at my original image here I'll do this here so you can see it this is this size became this size so I would say it's probably a little bit more than a third I like to draw it as big as I possibly can the other thing to remember when you're doing this before you pop it in the oven if you want to punch a hole in it because you're making jewelry or something other than a cake topper you need to do that before it's baked because as it shrinks the plastic becomes very thick good question so yeah draw it a little bit bigger than you intend it to be just tracing using my Sharpie and working on the glossy side of the paper the back side is frosted and we're going to color that in with our colored pencils in just a minute now something like his whiskers on this negative side I'm not going to draw that in because I don't want to have to cut around it I'm not worried about that I can just do some whiskers on the side of his face and that's enough suggestion for me I'm gonna do some his little tiger stripes here you can have as little or as much detail as you want I'm going to show you some other ones I did earlier today - in just a minute I think this would be just so much fun with like kids book imagery your kids favorite storybook character if you have a kid or a little one in your life or for an adult I'm already thinking about all my girlfriend's so I can make these for their birthdays I've also got the toaster oven going so that it's heating up shrinky dink recommends that you're using a preheated oven almost all my stripes in there we're getting close you definitely want to make sure you have all your marks before you bake this okay I think that's good I'm going to keep my photo or a clip art image kind of close so I can refer to it for color and I'm not gonna color on the front side that's glossy because I'm gonna use colored pencils so I need to flip this over and color on the back side it's textured it's going to take the colored pencil really nicely and because I've already made an orange tiger I thought this time I would make blue tiger oh and before I do that I think you should have a party hat so let's just draw that real quick on the front so I can color it in on the back yes we have another question oh yeah good question Eliza hi Eliza thank you for writing your question Eliza is asking what's the website that has good vintage images and that is graphics fairy that was just my timer because I was preheating my oven I don't need to set it again it's pretty warm so we're going to pop this in here in just a minute but I just want to color my tiger graphics fairy is the name of the website where you can find vintage copyright free imagery Dover is another great source they make books and if you sign up for their newsletter they send one page of copyright free vintage imagery a week to you in your inbox so that's a good resource this is kind of a turquoise tiger you'll see to that as the shrinks the color will become kind of denser and really saturated which I love it takes the colored pencil so so well I'm not referring to my original image too much because I'm making this Tiger Bluegreen he could be purple maybe whatever color you like I go back in with some blue this would be a fun thing for kids to do at this stage you could do the drawing or the tracing and then they could do the coloring you can see that I'm not being Precious about this at all I think it's going to be really fun to have a blue tiger to go with the orange tiger I made earlier when we're done coloring this guy we're going to cut it out when the shrinks down you'll see any place that's left blank will be kind of a frosted color it's not going to be Y it's not going to be entirely transparent is going to be somewhere in between I want to get his party hat in there another question because we're live you can ask questions in the name again Elizabeth sorry because we hadn't Eliza hi Elizabeth I'm Elizabeth Afghan can you use sharpies or do color pencils work better I like the combination of the two I like Sharpie on the front and colored pencil on the back and the reason is when the shrinky dink shrinks and the plastic becomes months much denser you basically get a double layer you can kind of see some depth in there and hopefully we'll be able to show that to you on the camera once everything shrinks and you'll be able to see it so it gives a really cool effect and that's why I like to use the rough-and-ready kind of shrinky dink the one that's the frosted because it's the only shrinky dink that has the textured back which will take the colored pencil otherwise some of the other ones that they make where it's glossy on both sides or it's white and not transparent you only use sharpie on that so it's totally up to your preference but I like to use a combo of the two good question you can see like how saturated these colors are which is really fun I'm almost done with my crazy green tiger here all right once I'm happy with that I'm going to cut him out using some sharp scissors so you can see it's kind of like that I want to leave some space down here where his feet are to have little ends and you could draw them in if you were afraid you were going to forget I could draw in some little tabs and those are going to be to place the tiger into the cake so he stands up but I'm just not I'm not going to draw them I'm just going to remember to cut around them and I'm not cutting right on the line I'm doing this a little bit of a margin it's going to be really small when this shrinks anyway so I'm not worried about it and all these little scraps you can save these especially if you want to make the shrinky dink jewelry which is Nicole's class there's a link for it in the comments these little pieces are perfect for that because they shrink to be really really tiny you can even make buttons as long as you put a hole in them before you bake them you could make ornaments for the holidays I think that would be super fun I love the cake topper idea because it's something that you can create it to tradition around it's something that you could use your after year maybe every year you create a new cake topper as a surprise for somebody and then you have a little collection of them and if you are wanting to make a really fancy cake to go with your cake topper you can check out our Wilton's classes Allisyn posted a link for those earlier really this would be a fabulous topper for any of the classes they teach we've got some really cool naked cakes and we've got some textured iced cakes and a lot of fun things you can put this on the cupcake too and I'll show you that in a little bit now one thing I would say is you're going to see this when we put it in the toaster oven but this is going to curl up and you're going to feel like you're going to have heart attack because it's pretty terrifying and then it's going to relax all while it's in the oven now if you're gonna do something like an octopus or something that has a lot of really fine little tendrils to it when it curls up those little tendrils can get tangled and they'll relax but they may stick to one another so if you were doing something like an octopus I would probably try to find a way to connect some of those tentacles or something so that you have more wider pieces and not a ton of little skinny pieces so that's what this guy looks like my little blue tiger he's going to go on to my baking sheet which is lined with parchment paper which is great Wilton makes that and super easy to cut out and put in a liner you go straight on there the packaging recommends that the color side goes up but I find that I like the Sharpie side up both sides have Inc on them one has the Sharpie in the other has the colored pencil wax on it so whatever you prefer you might want to experiment depending on what kind of materials you're using I'm going to put this back on and making sure it's set to 325 because that's what my packaging says and I'm just going to pop it in and I'm not going to actually use a timer instead I want to watch it it can bake from anywhere from one to three minutes depending on the size of your image and how dense it is and it's going to curl up it'd be crazy and then it's going to relax and then we'll take it out and let it cool before we put it into one of our desserts so now we watch we've got some good comments and don't forget to like and share with your friends and follow us on mobile so you get notifications for our live shoots who do this every Tuesday and Thursday oh cool Jennifer says that this will be a great application for zipper pulls and I totally agree that will be awesome it's back-to-school time you want to freshen up your wardrobe or do something cool on your kids backpack would be super fun you could even have do have kids draw and then you could color them in there could be some combo you can cut them out and put them on zipper poles I love that idea good job Jennifer wood shrinking up whoo looks crazy in here it'll relax though it's getting tiny it's kind of magical to watch that that's why I really like doing it in a toaster oven doing this whole process it's small and contained and easy to do but it also allows you to kind of watch it happen which is really fun now it's relaxing if you have something that doesn't feel like it's relaxing in your little worried like that last leg I can go in there with a little wooden stick and let it sit down I'm going to give it maybe five more seconds in there I'm going to pull it out and let it cool and want to show you one trick in case it doesn't relax all the way we have a question give me one sec I'm going to pull this out first this stage is really important because if you have something that is lumpy bumpy has not unfurled all the way this is where you need to press it down so put another piece of parchment paper on top and use a spatula and just give it a good little press if something does not relax and it's hardened before you can get it to relax you can put it back in the toaster oven for a couple of minutes until it softens should relax again or you can pull it out and give it a press with a spatula this is all very hot right now but it does cool quickly so I'm going to pull this off and just let it cool on the table this little tray is hot so I'm just going to pop it back in the toaster oven so don't burn myself on accident and then Alison has another question good question you know what shrink eating paper the like is something if you're over 30 you know about I did call the local art supply store and had to explain numerous times what a shrinky dink was and it made me feel one very old and too a little sad because how fun is this that the world isn't about shrinky dinks I totally thinks it's something that like resurfaces during the holidays and all those like nostalgic gifts come out but I actually got my paper on Amazon because that was easy to find I chose the rough-and-ready that's the one with the frosted back side that uses colored pencil I use sharpie on the front but also comes an inkjet printable version a double glass version so it's gloss on both sides sharpie only and a version that is solid white which I think might be the version it's possibly the version that nicole uses in the shrinky-dinky --rings which makes these little swallows you can do a cake topper with any of those check out Amazon but maybe check out your local craft store it's possible that one of the big craft stores would also carry this and just ask for some help if you can't find it oh my god how cute is this can you guys I'll see that my little blue tiger is going to go with my orange tiger and they're going to have a party do you have any other questions hi Liza um Eliza's asking she's from Australia so thank you for tuning in I'm not sure what time it is on your end of the world was probably either very early or very late and she's asking what is a toaster oven and a toaster oven is like a regular oven it's very very tiny and compact it's often something that you have in like a college dorm room or your office kitchen for bagels and such you could do this in a regular oven and either will work I think this is great because you can really keep an eye on it because it's got this little tiny door that you can open in the process and you're not blasted with heat in the same way that you are with like a home oven which is big good question any more questions I would say though what's awesome is the consistency I drew these two tigers in exactly the same way and they shrunk to the same size which is nice so they're saying is about a third of the size it feels a little bit smaller than that but I still really love the size I think this is great for a cupcake or a set of cupcakes or a set of cakes and we're going to put this into a little cake and I want to put both the Tigers in here and you can see those little tabs are super handy so that it can stand upright I didn't have to glue a toothpick on the back or make some kind of adjustment I just built it into my design before I baked remember if you are doing the jewelry or something that you want to hang this let's say you want to make a mobile which would be super cute you need to punch a hole in the shrinky dink film before you put it into the toaster oven so that this was like the perfect project to please my younger self and also to please my adult self this kind of stuff is super fun for drawing and tracing you can do it with kids and it's something that you can pull out every single year and make birthdays really special or any other type of celebration remember we do these live shoots at 4 p.m. PST every Tuesday and Thursday and you can like and share it on Facebook if you're on mobile you can hit that follow button and if you missed it you can watch it on our videos tab and check it out on CB TV tomorrow we have one more question oh good question Michels asking do you need to wash them I don't think you need to wash them these are pretty like hand wash you want to treat them delicately like you would any kind of cake topper and so don't like don't run them in the dishwasher or something like that just give them a little hand wash and you can even probably just wipe them off with a paper towel the heat sets all of the ink and colored pencils and so forth I wouldn't put marker pen on the part that's going to go into the cake so I don't want to dry the tab so much and make that permanent I like that that's just the regular plastic and I'm not worried about it people eat with plastic utensils all the time so you should be good good questions you guys thanks for tuning in