DIY Shrinky Dinks

This injection of money and know-how added a new shine of professionalism. The fun part is that you do not have to be a master artist to make really adorable crafts using shrink film. If you’d like to check out more ways you can use your Cricut check out these posts! Once they are flat again you’ll want to cook for about 30 seconds longer.

Tips for Working with Kids

Some crafters even began experimenting with Shrinky Dinks to make unique jewelry and custom decorations, showing that this simple plastic had uses beyond just childhood play. Some children even used them to make customized name tags, accessories for their dolls, or miniature artwork to trade with friends. Shrinky Dinks started as large, thin sheets of plastic that kids could draw on with colored pencils or markers. This accidental invention soon became a household name, and by 1975, Shrinky Dinks hit store shelves, quickly becoming a beloved craft for children across America. The discovery was both simple and fascinating—kids could color and customize the plastic before baking it, watching it transform into a hardened miniature version of their artwork. Either send it to me by email or share it on my facebook page– I’d love to add it to my Shrinky Dinks Fun Pinterest Board!

Steps for making shrinky dinks

• We are a group of creative makers who enjoy learning how to make just about anything new, plus we love sharing our ideas with the world.
• Rounded corners on your shapes can also minimize extreme curling.
• Most shrinky dinks can be made by heating your shrink plastic sheet in the oven, but we are using a heat gun for ours.

If you want a more colourful version just add the appropriate flag. Make a personal jewellery pendant by creating a shrink of your country or state. A really cool shrinky dink idea, I love the way she got the fingers to curl. Cookie cutters were used to get the Christmas shapes for these lights. The guide walks you through designing colorful patterns on shrink plastic, cutting out earring shapes, baking them to shrink, and assembling the final pieces.

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Morris and Bloomberg enlisted their children—three from shrinky dinks each household—to help assemble the kits. Just be cautious you don’t rub off your beautiful colors when you are done. (I also made some “Paw Patrol” ones because I have children who LOVE “Paw Patrol” and because we are working with a clear medium, you can trace!) I started by outlining all of my shapes with black, and then went back and colored them all in. Scientists who want manipulate the properties of certain materials work with nano-scale patterns printed with those materials.

Where to purchase materials:

It’s like a magic art project – you draw on the shrink film, heat it up, and watch it shrink! These have always been a student favorite! Tiny designs have more possibility of the sides touching each other when they curl up in the heat. The reason I recommended not making your designs too small is because of this curling. Don’t freak out if your DIY Shrinky dinks start to curl up.

Simple Treats

You can leave a space in the unpainted part to put a hole in case you don’t want to put a hole in your image. If you add a lot of paint, it will flake off when melting! But if you are kiddos are little, you might just want to do colored pencils for mess sake!

I’ll also be drawing my own design but as this shrink film is transparent you can also trace a page from a coloring book, magazine or book! For this project I’m making a key chain but check out some other ideas of things you can create at the bottom of the post! When they shrink, the colors on your artwork become more condensed, making them darker. Shrinky dinks shrink about 1/3 their original size when heated – I use a small craft oven; a toaster oven, kitchen oven, or heat gun, can also be used! They’re my favorite, with one side that has a sanded surface, which, takes mediums really well!

The passing decades have not diminished their appeal and my 7th graders absolutely LOVE creating designs using this shrinkable plastic. I am a product of the 70’s and “Shrinky Dinks” was a favorite childhood craft activity! Shrink plastic is fantastic for creating unique, lightweight jewelry pieces. It’s simpler than you might think!