DIY Shrinky Dinks: Use Recycled Plastic To Make This Retro Craft!

OFNMY’s set includes 25 shrink plastic sheets measuring 8.3 x 5.8 inches, compatible with both inkjet and laser printers. The quality of the printable surface ensures colors remain vivid, making it an ideal choice for DIY enthusiasts seeking personalized and durable plastic crafts. The frosted side is optimal for printing vibrant images, photos, or custom artwork, enabling complete creative freedom without hand-drawing limitations. Save scraps and cut them into new shapes for future projects.

Release the chopstick and if your piece at the top needs flattening, use a small spatial to flatten it. Cut out the flat part of your clamshell packaging and draw cute heart shapes on them. You will need something like popsicle sticks to hold it flat because it will curl up onto itself and make a jumbled mess. As soon as I take an ornament out of the oven, I put it on a flat surface and use a heat-resistant glove. In the end, it flattens back out and you have a cute ornament. The parchment paper on top should keep it from curling all the way over on itself and sticking.

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Pop your misshapen ring back into the oven on the brown paper, balancing it upright on its curved surface so the join is at the top (as in the picture above). When your strip comes out of the oven, you’ll have to work quickly – you only have about 10 seconds before it has cooled and becomes rigid. Your strip will begin to curl up and wiggle about as some parts heat more quickly than others and so begin to shrink more quickly. Preheat a toaster oven or conventional oven to the temperature specified on your packaging.

Pens, Pencils, and Printing

Cut out the desired shapes from the clean plastic packaging using scissors. Preheat the oven to 325°F (163°C) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Keep in mind that the shapes will shrink to about half their original size, so make them slightly larger than you want the final result to be. Cut out the desired shapes from the clean plastic containers using scissors. Start by drawing your petal or leaf shapes.

Can You Use Acrylic Paint on Shrinky Dinks?

Once the shrinky dinks shrinky dink crafts have reached the time limit, they should be reduced in size and be mostly flat. Line a pan with parchment paper and place your shrinky dinks color side up on the parchment. You can use a toaster oven, convection oven, or standard oven for baking the shrinky dinks. Once the cutting is complete, and before unloading your mat, check to see if the cut went all the way through. Now, select the new material from the material list by clicking "Browse Materials" and changing the Categories drop-down menu to "My Materials." The Fine-Point Blade is already selected so I left that in place.

Personalized Name Tags & Initials

• You don’t have to use an ink jet printer—you can simply draw on it with felt-tip pens or colored pencils.
• Cut out the desired shapes from the clean plastic packaging using scissors.
• It all works and flattens out nicely.
• Whether you choose to use #6 plastic or shrink plastic sheets, the possibilities are endless for designing custom jewelry, keychains, ornaments, and more.
• Watch your project as it shrinks, twists, and then flattens back out.
• 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.

Learn all about this fashion-forward author’s work, their inspiration, and their favorite styles. Whether you’re crafting personalized jewelry, quirky keychains, unique home accents, or heartfelt handmade gifts, the possibilities are truly endless. From simple childhood fun to sophisticated crafting applications, Shrinky Dinks offer a delightfully magical and surprisingly versatile medium. Shrinky Dinks remain a fantastic craft for children, fostering creativity and fine motor skills (with adult supervision for cutting and baking, of course).

Before diving into the crafting process, it’s important to gather all the necessary materials. Originally invented by the chemist Arthur F. Mebius in the 1970s, this concept quickly turned into a beloved crafting activity. You can use resin or epoxy to coat the colored surface to make it sparkling.

Once they are flat, leave them in the oven about 30 seconds more. First, they will shrink and wrinkle up and get sort of curly! If you’re using a baking sheet/cookie sheet, you might want to cover it with foil or parchment paper before baking. If that does not work then place them between Teflon® coated sheets with the Teflon® sides contacting the sample and a hot iron on a non-coated surface, but even that would not be very successful. Trying to fix samples that shrunk unevenly is difficult since they become tacky (sticky) when hot and would stick to an iron’s surface. So THEN I used my brain and we cut out a sheet from each side of the box (giving me now 250 sheets! WOOT! I do love a bargain) and shrunk those with absolute perfection.