Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Homemade Shrinky Dinks


My kids love making Shrinky Dinks as much as I did as a child. We have a nifty Shrinky Dink maker, which is ironically the same thing as the E-Z Bake oven (which we also have, now that I think about it.... must dig that out soon). Today we made Shrinky Dinks the old fashioned way: in the OVEN!

What you need:



Plastic lids to disposable cake pans
Permanent markers
Scissors

What you do:
1. Use the scissors to cut up the plastic cake lids/salad bar containers/etc into various sizes and shapes. We tried using decorative scissors but had the best luck with plain old straight edged scissors.

2. Use the markers to decorate the plastic pieces any way you'd like. You can use a paper punch to punch a hole in them to use as key rings or necklace charms.



3. Place the decorated plastic pieces onto a disposable aluminum tray (or a baking sheet with parchment paper).

4. Place into a preheated 350° oven.

5. Watch carefully!!! They only take a minute or less to puff up and then flatten back down.



I left our first batch in a tad too long and the transparent plastic turned solid white. It's still cool looking, but not as fun as see-through.

6. Remove from oven, carefully, and allow to cool on a rack.



This is a key chain my daughter made by punching a hole in the plastic before baking.

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