Shrink Plastic Experiment 1

Over the past few weeks I have learnt of a material that I never knew existed which is shrink plastic. I was pretty amazed to learn of what it does and all the different things you can make from it. In case you haven't heard of shrink plastic, its basically a plastic sheet which you can draw a design on, you then cut this design out and bake it in the oven. The heat of the oven makes your design shrink down to 7 times its size and become 7 times thicker, so you end up with a sort of plastic charm which you can use to make badges, necklaces, bracelets, etc.

For some time now I have been wanting to kind of expand the range of products I offer in my shop but without breaking the bank, so I've been very excited to try out this new found material. So this blog post is about my first official experiment with the medium, told with photos (lucky you)!
Note: I should warn any readers now that this experiment does not end well. It goes really well right up to the very end and then I tripped up on something. But you live, you learn, right?

First I sketched out the designs I wanted to make. The idea was to make the designs into pin badges. The designs need to be 7 times bigger then you intend as they will shrink down a lot in the oven.

I then placed some shrink plastic over the sketches (I obtained this from ebay and the brand was called 'shrinkies') and traced over them using a permanent marker.

I cut out my designs, ready to go into the oven.

After being placed in the oven for just a couple of minutes, they shrunk down and became these little fellas.
I placed 3-4 of the cut outs at a time on to a foil-lined baking tray and put in a 170°C oven for just a couple of minutes. They will contorted and shrunk down. Once the charms stopped shrinking and were lying reasonably flat, I took them out of the oven and placed a heavy book on to them to make sure they would be as flat as they could be!

And here are the finished charms compared to the original sketch - just to show how much they shrink down!

I used acrylic paints to colour the backs of each charm. You need to layer the paint so as the colours you want at the front of the charm are painted on first (if that makes sense).

After painting all the charms I coated them in one colour of paint just so the backs looked a bit more uniform. You may notice I used my nafftastic colours here - which I was pretty chuffed with.

I then coated the front and backs of the charms with a sealant (I used Mod Podge) just to give the charm some protection.

So I could have stopped here, the charms looked good and finished; but I had the bright idea of using embossing powder on the charms just to give them a more shiny and professional kind of glean. This is what happened...

Oh dear. I covered all of the charms with the embossing powder and put them in the oven at 170°C again. So I think what went wrong was that the oven was too hot and I didn't spread the embossing powder enough around each charm which resulted in this crafty gloopy catastrophe. What a shame.

So there we go, there was my first experiment with shrink plastic (and embossing powder)! I'm taking a little break from these charms for now, just to give myself time to recover from the first failure. But I'm hoping to try again and have some little pin badges up in my shop for Christmas. I will be extra careful with that tricky embossing powder in the future!

The Making of... The Man From Another Place Greeting Card

The new series of Twin Peaks is strange... theres good bits! But its also very strange...

Anyway! I've just finished editing together a video showing my drawing process when making characters for my greetings cards. And sticking with the Twin Peaks theme, its an illustration of The Man From Another Place. Its a simple sped up video just quickly demonstrating my process. I may make a more detailed 'Making of' video in the future, to properly talk through what I'm actually doing. But for now, here it is...



I quite enjoy making/editing together these videos, but unfortunately due to other commitments, they can take me quite some time to bring out! But hopefully I will have another video in the next couple of months showcasing another doughnut from the Twin Peaks Doughnut Book!

Summer Arts Market 2017

Hey!
I've been very busy over the past couple of weeks preparing for Liverpool's Summer Arts Market, which I'm very excited to be attending as an exhibitor for the first time!

So to commemorate attending this market I have been toiling away to add some new items to the Nafftastic Shop. I've been wanting to explore some different mediums in my shop for a while now, and I'm very pleased to now be selling tote bags and temporary tattoos! But never fear! I do love my obscure character greeting cards and have therefore made some more designs to go in the shop too.
So heres a sneak peek at the new things I'll be selling at market:

To celebrate the new series of Twin Peaks, I have a set of Twin Peaks character cards now in stock, including Audrey Horne, Dale Cooper, The Man From Another Place and of course, Log Lady.

I am a big fan of the Channel 4 comedy, Spaced. And have been itching to make some Spaced-themed cards for a while now. This set of character cards includes Tim, Daisy, Brian and Mike.

Who doesn't want to insult Star Trek's Wesley Crusher when just walking round on their regular day out? A Shut Up Wesley tote bag. (Please don't be mad at me Will Wheaton).

This new venture was very exciting for me and I'm fantastically pleased with the end result! Now you can wear some cute fruit on your skin in the coming summer months, with the help of these temporary tattoos.

Or if you would prefer something a little different how about some general cutesy tattoos featuring pizza and cats?

And finally, with Father's Day coming up this Sunday, I'd be a fool to not show these Arnold Schwarzenegger-inspired Father's Day cards. If you have seen the amazing film of Kindergarten Cop, then this image should say it all.

Obviously all of the usual Nafftastic stock will also be present at this year's market. If you can't make this Saturday, or you simply can't WAIT till this Saturday, all of these products are also available in my Etsy shop

I'm really excited for Saturday and hope to meet a lot of cool customers! If you're down in the vicinity then come and have a chat - I enjoy talking about all lots of sci-fi and fantasy stuff! (And cake. I love talking about cake).

The Summer Arts Market will be on Saturday 17th June at the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool city centre. Its on from 10am to 7pm.

Twin Peaks Doughnuts: How to make a Bobby Briggs doughnut

Well Twin Peaks Returns has finally hit our screens, and its as screwy as ever and I love it!

During the run up of Twin Peaks Returns, I decided to film myself making one of the doughnuts from theTwin Peaks Doughnuts book I made. Its one of my more successful attempts at a Twin Peaks doughnut - the Bobby Brigggs doughnut. A chocolate doughnut with a peanut butter meringue frosting and absolutely covered in chocolate and peanutty sweets! They're pretty addictive, I do have to say...
So may I present my first foray into filming baking/recipes!

Now these doughnuts are by no means perfect (hence why I'm not posting a recipe up for them), which you will see in the video. But hopefully it may give you some inspiration or maybe you can try making these doughnuts yourself? (And doing a way better job than me at them)! My Twin Peaks Doughnuts book features lots of different types of doughnuts, which all sound pretty delicious in my opinion. How about a chocolate and chilli Laura Palmer doughnut? Or a rich coffee Dale Cooper doughnut? Or maybe even a black forest gateau-themed doughnut for Audrey Horne? (complete with cherry)! The book features 42 ideas for 42 characters of Twin Peaks, so there is a lot to choose from! And please feel free to send me photos/videos if you do decide to try out these doughnuts - I would love to see them!



I'm hoping the next set of doughnuts I make will be The Man From Another Place. These are red velvet mini doughnuts with a sweet cream cheese frosting - decorated in a black and white zig zag pattern, of course!

Twin Peaks Doughnuts

Hello and howdy. So well over a year ago now I had just finished watching the second series of the cult TV classic, Twin Peaks. It had been recommended to me for months and I finally decided to watch it. And I'm so glad I did. Having never experienced David Lynch's work before, my mind was blown, I didn't even know TV like this existed! So yes, needless to say that Twin Peaks was right up my zany 'What the f-?' street!

Now because I am a baker, but more ultimately, a pig; I particularly enjoyed it when the police in Twin Peaks had a table full of doughnuts awaiting them in the station of a morning. I salivated when the camera slowly panned over those glistening sweet treats, and I came to call these shots 'Sexy Doughnut Shots'.
So, I came to thinking - "What would a Twin Peaks character's personal doughnut be"? There are so many unique and awesome characters in this series, I thought it was perfect for some amazing doughnut ideas! And so ensued many months of researching doughnut-making techniques as well as different flavour combinations until I eventually came up with this:

Book jacket design accompanied by real doughnuts

The Twin Peaks Doughnuts book!
Featuring 42 characters and (what I think) would be their 'Spirit Doughnut'.

Introductory page (with more doughnuts)

Double page spread

As well as designing and illustrating each character's doughnut, I also designed the book - which was a somewhat new venture for me. I find layout and book design a bit of a challenge but I found this experience fun as I got to experiment a lot and ultimately I had the freedom to do what I really wanted to do with the design.

The Laura Palmer Doughnut

The BOB doughnut

The Bobby Briggs doughnut

My original intention with this Twin Peaks doughnut idea was to create a full recipe book so people could properly make these doughnuts. But I fast realised that I am not a professional baker and an endeavour like this would take years! So instead I thought I would summarise my doughnut ideas into a book and invite others to try their hand at making them! And thats what I'm asking now! If you fancy yourself a baker and would like to give these doughnuts a go then give it a try! I would love to your photos of what you cook up, or if you have ideas for any variations or improvements to the original idea! You can send me your photos through Twitter or drop me an email! I'd genuinely love to see them and I'll post them up here for others to see!
My book is currently for sale in my shop if you would like to take a look - just in time for the new series of Twin Peaks coming out at the ...end of May, I believe? So best start baking, everybody! Lets have a Twin Peaks doughnut party!

I would like to try and film my own attempts at making these doughnuts, or at least posting up a recipe - as I have made several attempts of some of these doughnuts - Bobby Briggs being my most successful, the rest a bit hit and miss - but still fun to try never the less! (There is a blog post show a few of these attempts, which you can find here.)

Just in case you're interested, here is a couple of initial sketches/illustrations I worked up for this project:

Some doughnut sketches

Outlines of doughnuts

And lastly, I also made badges and a poster as well! I'd like to make some stickers or temporary tattoos of these in the future (if I felt there was enough demand maybe).

Pack of doughnut badges, anyone?

Doughnut poster - featuring all the doughnuts and flavours

The badges are also available to buy in my shop, they're available in 2 types of pack or individually.

I got both badges and the Twin Peaks book printed at the truly awesome Awesome Merchandise. They have a spectacular choice of formats to print on and offer a great price! Go get your stuff printed there!

Now lets start baking! I want Twin Peaks doughnut parties happening all over the shop!

Backstreet's Back

Ok, its not the dizzying boy band talcum powder shiny-ness of the Backstreet Boys, but yes, it is Claire!
I'm aware I have been very much lacking in my blog posts over the past year. And yes, I'm also aware hardly anyone/no one reads this blog so its actually not too big a deal; but I like to post updates from time to time and waffle on a bit more than Twitter's 100 character limit (or thereabouts) will let me. So, hello!

I have recently had a bit of a spring clean of my nafftastic brand, by changing the colour scheme (only very slightly just to make it seem really anal of me), updating my website and updating all the resulting social media accounts (which I didn't realise just how many I belonged to, seeing as I consider myself a rather unsociable person).

I will hopefully be returning in the next day or so to waffle about a big project I set myself last year. And which I may have mentioned in my last blog post... (in September, deary me). Twin Peaks Doughnuts! So look forward to that!

Sassify! Zine Vol. 2

Well well well, it has been a long time! It appears I have a love/hate relationship with the tumultuous ocean that is the internet/social media, so I had a a bit of a break on the beach and now I'm having a bit of a paddle again. I love paddling.

Anyway, I have been up to a few things whilst I've been away. The main thing being the completion of a big Twin Peaks project which has been the best part of a years work! But I'll do a big old stodgy blog post about that in the next week or so. For now, lets start easy. I was invited by Black Eyed Jack to contribute an illustration to his 'Sassify!' Zine, the theme of which was 'Killin' It' - showing someone or something 'doing shit' well
in his or her own way, and not caring about what people think.

And this is what I came up with:

Basically I knew I wanted to draw a unicorn, and I got the FatBoy Slim song Eat Sleep Rave Repeat stuck in my head AND I wanted to use fluorescent colours like in the Back to the Future pic I did a while back. So this is what happened! I really enjoyed using these particular colours and it looks much better than I thought it would in the printed zine! You can see the whole of the Sassify! zine by clicking HERE. A total of 35 artists were asked to contribute work to the magazine and you can see them all in there!

A slight re-branding of nafftastic

You may have noticed that the look of this blog has changed recently, as well as my website and Etsy shop

I decided (rather off the cuff) to re-brand myself and give Nafftastic a bit of a fresher look for the benefit of myself as well as for any visitors to my various "outlets".
You may recall a number of months ago, all the way back in October; I took part in Thunder Chunky's Back to Draw the Future event in which I drew a couple of characters from Back to the Future 2 (Blog post here) using a limited colour palette.

Well I liked the style/colour palette so much I decided to re-brand myself using the same style!
I did a couple of biro sketches just to get an idea of how I wanted things to look.

And then I just dived right in and made them up using Illustrator...

I've only managed to make up a couple of elements implementing this new style but I'm hoping to make up some full on illustrations over the next few months. I like the cutesy-ness of the style and it certainly feels like a breath of fresh air after the previous style I was using - this style is much more brighter and cleaner. So I'm looking forward to whipping up more pictures with it!

Clandestine Cake Club and Confetti Ice Cream Sandwiches

I have been baking away the past few weeks, using a new recipe book I was bought - The Clandestine Cake Club Cookbook

The Clandestine Cake Club Cookbook by Lynn Hill

Its an awesome recipe book filled with lots of fun, unique and easy-to-follow cake recipes! Now I do like challenging myself with the more fancy pants recipes, the likes you'll find in The Great British Bake Off: How to turn everyday bakes into showstoppers (which is a good book too)! But I have recently come to realise that baking isn't all about doing the most complex recipes or intricate bakes, you want something that tastes lovely and magical - and you can achieve this in very simple recipes, which can still 'wow' a group of people! (Plus, we are only blessed with 48 hours for the weekend and theres only so much baking you can squeeze into that time sometimes)!

ANYWAY, I loved the look of the Caramel Cake, so thats what I made.

All the good things in life right in that bowl

And mix!

The recipe used canned caramel, which was a relief. I don't have the greatest luck with making my own caramel! So it was just a case of beating, sifting and folding the ingredients to get these bad boys:

Woo, mama!

I whipped up some caramel buttercream whilst the cakes cooked and ended up with the glory you see before you!

The layout of the book is clear and concise with a big photo featuring the cake for
each recipe - which is always useful to see!

Grated milk chocolate on top - used a regular peeler (like you'd use for an apple)
to get the chocolate - so much easy then using a grater!
(Thanks Barefoot Contessa)!

The cake was delicious and a pinch of ginger and ground cloves (I had no cloves so used a bit of nutmeg instead) gave the cake a subtle spice flavour.
I also used my new recipe book to attempt my first ever Swiss Roll:

Strawberry and Cream Swiss Roll

And it was a success, hooray! I stupidly didn't read ahead in the recipe to realise you need to leave the swiss roll sponge rolled up whilst its cooling (I just rolled it up and out again several times during the cooling phase) but the sponge still rolled up great with the filling in it! You whip up a super fast strawberry syrup to layer into the roll - which was delicious and wish I had made more of!

So I fully recommend The Clandestine Cake Club Cookbook to any keen baker out there! There is a large variety of recipes, the book is well-designed and features some beautiful close-up photos of all the cakes involved and is very easy to follow! Apart from one or two recipes, all the ingredients for the cakes are easily found in your local shops - which is always a plus!

Now, just to finish, a quick glimpse of some ice cream sandwiches I made for my boyfriend's birthday last week:

Assembly line to make the ice cream sandwiches - that ice cream was
melting fast!

Covered in hundreds and thousands

Chocolate chips and M&M's are in the cookie dough 

I watch a lot of the Food Network channel on Freeview and this is a recipe that gets repeated a lot in the ad breaks: Confetti Ice Cream Sandwiches. So I thought I would give it a shot! The cookies were quick and fun to make - who doesn't want M&M's in their cookie dough? Although I would say take those cookies out of the oven when the recipe tells you to cause I was over cautious and left them in longer - which I think resulted in them being a bit too crunchy for an ice cream sandwich - the cookies were too hard to bite into when taken out of the freezer (making them impossible to eat if you wear braces like myself)! So you have been warned! Take those cookies out of the oven when the recipe tells you too! They will harden up once cool.

So thats all my baking for the past two weeks! I'm aiming to do Macarons from my Nerdy Nummies recipe book next week, I'm excited!

Step Aside, Pops by Kate Beaton

I treated myself to the latest Kate Beaton collection the other day.

And it doesn't disappoint!
I dipped in and out of the book all over the weekend and finished it last night.
My particular favourite strips were the Strong Female Characters, Wuthering Heights, Muscle-y Cinderella and the Straw Feminists - although all the shorts gave me a good chuckle.

Strong Female Characters

Close-up of a Wuthering Heights strip

The Tale of a Muscle-y Cinderella

Cinderella and the Prince working out together

The Straw Feminists

As I have probably mentioned before, I love Beaton's facial expressions and body postures. She has a lovely loose style which makes achieving these expressions look effortless and adds to the humour of a strip. Mixing comic quips with famous historic events or literary works is a stroke of genius and I think Kate Beaton books should be introduced to the school curriculum! I can only imagine how much more fun history and english would have been having a few of Beaton's strips dotted throughout a textbook!

So, to get straight to the point, another great Hark! A Vagrant Collection from Kate Beaton! You should go get it, it would look awesome on your book shelf and is actually a great read too! Hooray!