Howdy, y’all! Today we have the most fun craft ever for you and your littles to do! I have two words for you – Shrinky Dinks. Yippie! In the following tutorial, we are going to show you how we made a variety of different crafts using shrinky dinks and various accessories. We made key chains, earrings, magnets, charm bracelets, cell phone danglers! Oh my! Shrinky Dinks are such an incredibly fun and versatile project for you to do.
As a mom who grew up in the 80’s Shrinky Dinks have a special place in my heart. I remember doing similar (but less involved) projects growing up. Doing this was nostalgic for me and so much fun for both of us. I was so happy to share and enjoy this fun craft with my daughter. And let me tell you – we had a blast!
Just take a look at some of the fun things we made.
The thing I love about crafting with my daughter is that it gives us something fun to do together and we have the best conversations about life and many laughs while doing it. This in particular was a great, easy, and fun project.
Let’s not waster anymore time and get right the Shrinky Dinks and Crafting!
Also heads up – There’s a short video as well for this craft if you scroll to the bottom. Yeah!
Time: This one depends. If you do it quickly I would say it can take a half an hour to an hour to do the project from beginning to end. We actually took probably two hours just because we were having so much fun and wanted to do a variety of designs and accessories.
Shrinky Dinks Needed Craft Supplies
- Scissors
- Hole Puncher
- Shrinky Dink Paper
- Coloring pencils (or permanent markers like Sharpies)
- Baking Sheet
- Parchment Paper
- Glue Gun (optional if you are creating magnets)
- Traceable (we have a free downloadable one here or you can create your own!)
- Accessories (we got key chain rings, cell phone straps for charms, magnets, ear wires for earrings) Keychains hooks,20PCS Keychains,20PCS Ball Chains,15PCS Lobster Clasp,6PCS Sliver-Plated Ear Hooks,200PCS Open Jump Rings
The kit that we used to make our shrinky dink projects is below. We are not an affiliate of this product. It’s just the product that we used. You can use this kit, a similar kit, or just shrinky dink paper if you wish.:
Steps to Make Shrinky Dinks
**Parents please make sure you are present and are mindful of your kids using scissors, etc.**
Draw
The first part of creating a shrinking dink craft is deciding what you are going to make and creating a design to use. You are welcome to use our free shrinky dink printable below, or, feel free to create your own.
Printable
My Daughter drew some of her own templates as well and used some of the ones that I created. That’s what’s so cool is that really the sky is the limit and you can do whatever you wish!
Tips: When we traced our various designs we tried to trace each design as close to each other as possible as to use as much of the Shrinky Dink paper as possible.
Shrinky Dink paper will shrink to 20% of original size so make sure to get an idea of how big you want your final design to be.
Color Your Shrinky Dink Template
Now it’s time to do the fun part – color your beautiful designs! Make sure that you color on the textured side of the Shrinky Dink paper (not the glossy side). We used colored pencils to color in our design and it worked perfectly. It was easy to trace the designs and easy to color them in, too. Also, the final Shrinky Dinks colors turned out very vivid and bright. Yeah!
You can also use permanent markers (like Sharpies) to color in your Shrinky Dink creations, however, colors may darken when baked.
Cut Out Your Design
The next step is to carefully cut out your design. **Parents please make sure to be present and help your kids with cutting if needed.** Some of the designs we decided to cut directly on the line, some we left a little half circle above the design to use as a place to punch the hole in the top. It’s up to you how you would like your designs to look and dangle.
Punch a Hole
If desired punch a hole in the top of your Shrinky Dink cut out. Just make sure that you leave enough room so there’s a complete hole is punched in the top (and not a partial circle that isn’t completely closed). Some of our designs as mentioned above we left a little half circle at the top of various designs or you can do the hole directly in the
Bake
Okay folks – it’s time to bake the Shrinky Dink Designs! Parents please make sure to do this step for your children.
Preheat your oven to 330° F (or follow the specific instructions of your Shrinky Kit or paper). Our kit indicated this temperature.
Take your baking sheet and place down a layer of parchment paper. Place the various Shrinky Dink designs on the parchment paper. You can also put a layer of parchment paper on top of the Shrinky Dink designs to help to keep them flat.
Also, we had a lot of Shrinky Dink designs to create so we did them in batches.
Put the baking with designs in the oven and bake for 1-3 minutes. Make sure to stay and watch them because they can bake quickly.
The first batch took around 3 minutes because the oven wasn’t yet warmed up. The next couple of batches seemed to go more quickly – like 1 -2 minutes.
When you take the baking dish with baked designs out of the oven you may need to flatten out the designs slightly with a flat object in case they have curled. You can keep the parchment paper on top of them while you do this. Make sure to not touch the shrinky dinks with your hand to flatten – they are very hot. Always, use another tool. We used a spatula (that we only use for crafts not for cooking) or you can use another flat object or even an oven mitt if you keep the parchment paper over top while flattening.
Let them cool.
Easy & Fun Shrinky Dink Video – Want to Watch the Video?
Make Your Shrinky Dinks into an Accessory
Now it’s time to create your various Shrink Dink Master Pieces! We created earrings, key chains, charm bracelets, and magnets. Here are some pics of the fun designs that we created for your inspiration!
For Key Chains and Lobster Chains just loop the desired designs into the hole. You can do one Shrinky Dink Design per item or a few! It’s totally up to you!
Here are my little Cacti that I created but completely forgot to punch the hole in the top. Poopsy! So I made them magnets instead. It’s all good!
Here are some fun earrings that my daughter made!
Also, these poor cacti were meant to be made into earrings but I completely forgot to punch holes in the top before baking. Poopsy! So I made them into cactus magnets instead. I happened to have a thin business card magnet that I didn’t need. I cut a couple of small rectangles out of it and used a glue gun to glue the magnet pieces to the back.
So tell us what Shrinky Dink projects you are going to make or have made! We would love to hear about your creations in the comments!
Happy Designing!
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