DIY Shrinky Dinks

The plastic for this was hard to come by, to be honest. #6 is difficult to recycle in Colorado, so there isn’t really a lot of it. Other people’s blogs were suggesting that you could get it at the salad bar in a grocery store, or the bakery. But, one day as I was waiting on a prescription to be filled, I checked all of the plastic containers in that side of my grocery store and found that only the deli containers with the black bottoms had clear, #6 plastic lids. And I don’t buy fried chicken.

I experimented with this project and learned a few things I’ll share with you at the end.

Things you need:

#6 clear plastic
Permanent markers (colors of your choosing)
Scissors
Hole punch (if you want to make charms)
Parchment paper
Cookie sheet

How we did it:

Acquire plastic - Seriously, this was more complicated than other bloggers made it seem. Maybe it’s because I live in Colorado. Take out doesn’t come in plastic, and grocery store muffins come in #1s. It’s hard to recycle #6 around here, and people care about recycling, so the only things that I could find in #6s were the deli foods I literally never buy (I scouted the store in my free time). So my partner asked the deli guy if we could just have some #6, clear plastic lids “for a science experiment” (with kids in tow). He was clearly a bit confused, but gave up a stack of lids without a fuss. Win.

Preheat your oven - Preheat to 250, now or later. I never preheat first thing because it always takes me longer to prepare than it takes my oven to preheat. Besides, 250 is SO low.

Cut and/or color - First, cut your plastic so that you have a plain, flat piece. Then, depending on what your plan is, either color the plastic or cut it into the shapes you want. I used the plastic to make necklace charms for each of my kids with my phone number and my partner’s, so they are equipped to get help if they ever get lost. For that, I cut out the shapes I wanted, then wrote the information on the plastic. I’ve seen really attractive charms made by letting small children color a whole sheet of plastic, then cutting it into identical shapes.

Tip: Cut the pieces about 6 times the size you want them to end up. Trust me.

Hole punch - Only if you want a charm. This might be a step you want to do after cutting and before coloring, if you’re doing a more planned-out piece like I was. Otherwise, it can be done after.

Tip: When the plastic shrinks, it also thickens, so the holes don’t need to be as far from the edge as you might think. The pieces become quite sturdy.

Bake - Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. I’m not sure if it would be a problem if you didn’t, but I didn’t want to find out. You can reuse the parchment paper for more shrinks if you want.

I can’t tell you how long to bake them. It’s a quick process (my largest pieces took only a few minutes). It depends on the size of the plastic piece, it seems. Just watch them. They will curl up a lot. You might worry that if two parts of hot plastic touch each other it’ll be ruined. It’s fine. Then, they uncurl. When the pieces are all completely flat again, they’re done. You might want to bake similarly sized pieces together and avoid mixing sizes. I didn’t wait to see what would happen if I left them in longer than they needed.

More Tips: Experiment with this. I learned that they work better if they curl upward instead of down at the edges. For my lids, they always curled in the same direction (toward the top/outside of the lid). They also always seemed to shrink more in one direction than the other. I found that I could see faint striations (lines) in the plastic and that the greatest shrinking happened against the striations. So if you want all of your pieces to come out the same size and shape, cut them the same size and in the same direction on the plastic.

Also, seal them. My kids were playing with their charms and rubbed off part of the marker. I don’t have anything to seal them with just yet, but I’m planning on getting some spray sealer. I hear that works just fine. I’ve also heard clear nail polish works, but check that it is non-acetone before you try.

This project is adapted from RustSunshine with modifications and additional information based on my experience.