Shrinky Dinks and Drawing Easel Idea

I hope you are doing great today. I wanted to share a craft with you that I had almost forgotten: shrinky dinks. I remember making these with my mother when I was a little girl. Oh, the thrill of watching your drawing shrivel up right before your eyes! Last year I had seen it somewhere and brought it up with my husband, who to my suprise had never even heard of shrinking plastic. So I headed out to the nearest craft supply store (A.C. Moore) and found a great deal on some shrinky dink plastic to educate my husband on craft making. It came in a nice pack of 8 sheets, so no worries if you mess the first one up. There are directions if you have never made any. Its super simple, basically just draw your design, cut it out with a pair of scissors, and then bake at 325 for a couple of minutes. Done!

I used regular colored pencils to draw, but it was a little dusty after baking, so I had to fix it with some polyurethane spray. You could use markers as well. The nice thing about the sheets in this set was that it was see-through, so I printed out some photos (left) from my desktop and used them as a guide to make fun gifts to my family and friends.

I made a whole bunch of keychains/zipperpulls, earrings, and a pin. To the left you can see a pair of the earrings.

To get an idea of how large to make your drawings, I have the below guide of before and after baking size.

Below is a flathaired retriever pin for my friend who has two, and zipperpulls/ charms for my mom and sister of our dog and horse back home. (I hope they dont read this before I give these to them)

Here's a collection of other charms.

My husband is into these plastic Gundam model kits, so I drew him some of his favorite characters.

I started an 8 week botanical illustration class this week as well. It is taught by the very talented Louise Smith, who has a beautiful website http://www.greenstems.com/. One of the ladies in the class had made her own little travel easel from a camera tripod. I thought I'd share the simple design, in case anyone else needs to make one. Basically, she screwed a piece of wood to the piece that comes off on the top of the tripod, and added velcro on it. The other half was a piece of corrugated plastic board with velcro on the bottom of it. Voila! Stuck together makes a great mini easel that travels well, if you like to paint or draw outdoors.