a p p a r e n t l y

Click for a closer view

You know what I loved as a kid? Shrinky Dinks. I think they were second only to stained-glass suncatchers as a crafty activity. Why was I so drawn to crafts that required melting stinky plastic in the toaster oven?

Many years later, I’ve discovered Shrinky Dinks again, thanks to Etsy and the blogosphere, although now that I’m a grown-up I’m probably supposed to refer to the material as “shrink plastic.” These Etsy sellers make lovely rings, and these two sites demonstrate how supposedly easy it is to make them. Can you see where this is going?

I have now spent three two-hour naptimes playing around with shrink plastic (in addition to several hours sourcing materials and scouring the web for tutorials), and this is what I’ve learned so far:

• Grafix inkjet shrink plastic does not work very well.
• Shrinky Dinks brand inkjet shrink plastic works considerably better. I bought the opaque white.
• Neither is much fun during the shaping process. You have about four seconds to work with the hot plastic before it hardens, and it’s nearly impossible to get any control if you’re wearing oven mitts. So I took them off. Plastic gloves were useless. One could probably use the thin cotton gloves used in darkrooms, but I can’t find ours. My fingers feel just the tiniest bit burned.
• Take off any metal bracelets before you go sticking your arms repeatedly into a hot oven.
• A toaster over would probably be easier, as it contains the heat in a smaller area and you could work on the counter right in front of the oven. But we have a pop-up toaster.
• You can reheat your project a few times before it gets discolored and cranky. The Grafix shrink plastic showed more damage quickly and the image deteriorated.

Click for a closer view. That's my fifth-anniversary ring on the bottom. It's wood and titanium.

Even under the best conditions, my rings did not end up smooth and round and lovely. Even when all the parts lined up properly and I was able to form the ends quickly around a wooden dowel, the rings look wonky. If you look at the shrink plastic rings on Etsy, they tend to look great from the front and uneven from the top. They are also really light and feel like, well, plastic. This makes them fun, but not really sale-able. I had been hoping this would be my quick-and-easy craft for my annual local craft fair, but that is just not going to happen.

If you’re feeling experimental and resourceful, however, see what you can make from your scraps. I had a box of straight sewing pins nearby and discovered that little flowers make charming pin heads! I had much more fun drawing these little freehand flowers with a sharpie and coloring them in with colored pencils. They bake up in seconds and require no shaping. I also tried printing flower images onto the inkjet plastic; those are the larger ones. They’re cute, too, but I like the freehand flowers better. So there’s my silver lining.

pins!

If you have ideas as to what else I can make with my shrink plastic, please leave them in the comments! I have a few more sheets of the opaque white inkjet and 10 sheets of frosted non-inkjet. (I plan to sell/trade the rest of the Grafix inkjet sheets, so if you’re interested even after my lukewarm review, let me know. Maybe others have had great success with them?)