Last week, Lee Lee and I finally tried making “shrinky dinks” out of the #6 that I have been saving forever! Maybe I’m dating myself, but I remember making these as a kid… except back then they came in a kits with little colored pencils. The designs were similar to coloring book images of your favorite characters. I’ve seen this craft on several crafting blogs and just had to try it for myself! This craft really couldn’t be easier. If you don’t know, #6 plastic is very difficult to recycle and not many places accept it for recycling. This is a great, fun way to show your kids how to give something that you would normally throw away a new life!
Here’s what we used:
- piece of clear, smooth #6 plastic…The #6 plastic that I used was a lid from a disposable aluminum baking pan. I think those clear, take-out salad bar containers may also be #6. Just look for the triangle with the 6 in the middle!
- sandpaper
- colored pencils or permanent markers-all colors
- scissors
- hole puncher if you want to make your design into jewelry
Cut out the smooth part of the plastic and sand one side of it with sandpaper. Sanding it will give the plastic a nice surface for the colored pencils. If you choose to use permanent markers, you won’t need to sand. We don’t have those so we used the colored pencils (like what I did when I was a kid).
Draw, color and cut out your designs. Make sure to draw your designs larger because they will shrink down to about 1/3 of the size! If the area you are coloring seems “light”, it will concentrate some when the design shrinks down! Don’t forget to punch the hole in your design if you want it for jewelry making!
A little red star…
and a pink heart with a orange smiley face person! Be creative with your images! You can also trace images if you want! We traced the star images by putting a piece a scrapbooking paper under the plastic.
I put all the cut out designs on a little piece of aluminum foil, on a baking tray in a 350 degree oven for just a couple of minutes. Lee Lee and I actually watched the designs shrink down. It takes no time at all!
Here’s a shot of the baking process…the little designs start to curl up as they shrink! Don’t worry, they will flatten out again. I will say that some were still a bit warped, but I sort of like imperfection like that when it comes to this sort of thing.
Here’s the final product! As you can see from the picture above…my little blue bird looks brighter in color than in the top picture!
Enjoy!
