Making Art with Melted Plastic Bags

So this is something a little different for me. I know that almost every time I make one of these blogs, I say that what I’ve been doing has been an experiment, but this time I really mean it! I didn’t have any idea if what I wanted to achieve would work or not (it didn’t!) or any real plan of what I wanted to end up with. In the end, I’ve made a start with something that I think has the potential to be really interesting and so I thought I’d share with you what I’ve done.

I came across a video on Pinterest, I think, where someone used cling film to stick a napkin to card by ironing them together. I wondered if I could use this method to stick a leaf to paper even fabric. It kind of worked when I used the cling film to encase the leaf, but it didn’t actually make the leaf stick to the paper or fabric. However, I liked how the plastic looked on fabric so I thought I’d try that out with different coloured plastics.

Unfortunately, it didn’t really work. The plastic bags I used didn’t stick to the fabric at all, but they did melt together, so I tried that. I tried arranging them to create pictures and these were my results.

I thought maybe they would work as a pictures in their own right or as surfaces to paint on. Maybe I could add stitch to them or use them in collages or mixed media work. At the moment, I’m not really sure what my next move is, but it’s definitely something I’ll try and come back to in the future.