This month's TBT Craft-a-long features none other thank the classic Shrinky Dink. Many children of the 1980s will remember this fascinating plastic that shrinks when baked in the oven. While doing some web surfing, I found this great tutorial from blog PhotoJojo for ink jet compatible shrinkable plastic. I became inspired to experiment with this medium for the purpose of jewelry making. Please keep in mind that if you want to do the Shrinky Dink thang old school, you can still purchase how-to kits like this awesome Monster Lab one that I snapped a picture of while at the craft store. This craft totally holds up and gets a high rating in the instant gratification category.
To begin, I gathered my supplies: Parchment paper, pan, scissors, and ink jet shrink film. You will also need an ink jet printer (not included because it would not fit prettily on my pan).
Once I had my supplies together, I searched the internet for pictures that I thought would make awesome earrings. The directions on the shrink film package stated that the film, once heated, would shrink 50% and, when cooled, would harden and become thicker. (This all sounds kind of dirty to me, but my mind is always in the gutter.) I arranged the pictures and printed a sample sheet on a regular piece of paper. I felt that the pictures, when shrunk, would be too big. So I went back to my computer and reduced their size. The picture below shows an original size and reduced size comparison.
I cut out the printed pictures and chose one with which to do a test run. Following the directions on the shrink film plastic, I warmed up the oven to 325 degrees F. I laid a piece of parchment paper on the bottom of the pan, placed the sample picture on that piece, and then laid another piece of parchment on top--like a picture sandwich. I cooked the picture for three minutes. Below, you can see the original picture on the left and the shrunk picture on the right. Neat, right?!
It worked, it worked! I then baked the rest of the pictures. The photo below shows a before and after comparison.
At this point, I realized that I had only printed one half of a set of earrings. This caused me to go through the process of printing and cutting out two more sets of pictures. I decided to bake all of these pictures together, which turned out to be not the best choice.
So, okay. The picture above *looks* fine at first glance. However, baking all of the pictures together seems to have impacted how much they shrunk. Identical images also shrunk to different sizes. In addition, baking all of the pictures together impacted whether or not they flattened in the oven. In the picture below, note how the images on the left are larger than the images on the right. The images on the right were from the original batch. Both of these batches were cooked at the same temperature for the same amount of time.
The other issue I ran into was that of how to pierce holes through the plastic after it had baked. My magical jewelry hole punch caused the plastic to crack and left schmutz on the pictures. Blech.
With a sigh, I decided to reprint, recut, and rebake the images. This time, I baked no more than three images together at a time. I also punched holes through the pictures with a regular hole punch before shrinking them. Bask your eyes upon the results! These images were much more uniform in size and more flat. The regular hole punch worked perfectly.
Once I have sealed the images, I am planning to incorporate them into my jewelry designs. One pair is ready to wear, however:
Bowie-Jareth earrings FTW! Thanks, shrinkable plastic!
