Shrink Plastic

I didn't grow up with Shrinky Dinks so the idea of shrink plastic is very new and exciting. I'd seen a lot of tutorials on youtube of people using it to make pins and wanted to have a go.

I purchased this shrink plastic which is suitable to print on with an inkjet printer.

For my first experiment I printed two of my dogs in flower crown designs. I followed the instructions and printed them approximately three times bigger than I wanted the end product to be. I'd also read that the image appears darker once shrunk, so I lightened the images before printing them.

Cutting out the images was fairly easy, although the little leaves were a bit tricky, but I wondered how much these imperfections would show up once shrunk (spoiler: they didn't show up).

Then it was time for the oven, and the realisation that I need to clean my oven door as I didn't have a clear view of what was going on inside.

The shrinking process happens quite quickly. In the youtube videos I'd watched it looks like the footage is sped up but it really is that fast. The plastic folds up and then shrinks as it flattens down. It's really exciting!

I was really pleased with how they turned out. They aren't completely flat but for a first try I think they're great.

I decided to make one of the designs into a keyring which I did by drilling a hole through the plastic and attaching the ring. A hole can be made before shrinking with a hole punch, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with them before I shrunk them.

I think the unicorn pug design would look great as a pin so I'm going to look into getting some little pin backs to stick on.

Have you ever used shrink plastic? What did you make with it?

Pin it!