How to make Shrinky Dinks

Do you remember Shrinky Dink from your childhood? I loved them.
I recently bought a package of Shrinky Dinks and the kids and I couldn't stop creating things. If you haven't tried it you should. You start with thin sheets of plastic and then you draw on them with either permanent markers or pencil crayons. Some shrink plastic you buy is shiny on both sides and therefore pencil crayons don't work - but if you rough up the plastic with sandpaper the pencil crayons will work. After you colour your picture cut it out and put a hole in it before you shrink it.

Lilo made 2 little hockey players. She started by drawing the picture on paper first and then putting the drawing under the plastic and taped in place while she drew and coloured the picture on the plastic.

  And as the name suggests, the image will shrink so be careful to not make things too small. This is the size of the original drawing and the shrunken charms that Lilo made. It seems to shrink about to 1/3 the size of the original.

Once the items are cut out, place on a cookie sheet on a piece of tinfoil or parchment paper and put in a 325 degree oven. Now comes the best part watching them shrink so make sure your oven light is on. It will take a few minutes and the items with start to curl and wave but leave them a bit more and then will really shrink up and flatten. Once they flatten leave in another 30 seconds and then take out and flatten a bit more if needed with a spatula. Take the foil or parchment off the pan and let cool for a minute. They are so cute.

Another thing we figured out was that colours get darker when they shrink as well. Colours turned out nicer with pencil crayons versus permanent markers - see photo above. Also be careful cutting things out - the plastic can rip while cutting and also be careful when they are shrunk as thin pieces can break off (poor one armed hockey player)

Isla had a blast making all her characters. I love them. I thought they would make cute little charms on necklaces but she won't let me, she just wants to play with them. She named them all so I thought I'd write them down since I love the names she comes up with.

I also had fun and made a super awesome Shrinky Dink - I'll show you tomorrow.