As seen in Papercraft inspirations
Make a clever mini ruler to help work out how small your finished shrink plastic designs will be
Shrink plastic shrinks by around 45%, which means that your image can be seven times smaller! So it’s helpful to make a shrink plastic ruler gauge. When you measure any hand-drawn or stamped image with a standard ruler, you can look at the shrink plastic ruler to work out how big it will be once shrunk. Different types of plastic shrink differently, so choose the one that you’ll be using the most, or create rulers for each type.
You will need:
Follow our step-by-step guide to see how it's done!
 Step 1Cut a 4cm-wide strip of shrink plastic and sand one side using a sanding block. Sand the length and width – you’re aiming to roughen the surface so the ink will stay put. |
 Step 2Take a standard ruler and, with a permanent pen, mark out inch and centimetre measurements along the long side of the 4cm-wide length of shrink plastic. |
 Step 3Hold the plastic down on a heatproof surface using a wooden skewer. Move the heat gun up and down. It will start to curl and wriggle as it heats up! |
 Step 4Heat the plastic on both sides until it goes flat of its own accord. You’ll know when it’s fully shrunk as it will stop moving. Placing a light flat weight on top for a level end result. |