Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

I've made a few crafts over the years with shrink plastic , but I'm too cheap to buy the stuff in the store, so I make my own. I collect #6 plastic from bakery and deli containers, wash it off and save it for projects. I've even used alcohol ink on shrink plastic before , but that time, I waited until after the plastic had shrunk to ink it. I had always been curious if you could ink it before shrinking--so I set out to find out! I was especially excited when I took the lid off the container holding my twice baked potatoes from the grocery store. For one, I got to eat delicious potatoes with my supper, but I was doubly excited when I found that the lid of the container was #6 plastic...AND...they accidentally put two lids on the container! It's funny the things crafters get excited about. So I rinsed off the plastic and cut out the flat center of the lid. You can shrink the ruffled/fluted edges too, but it's much harder to decorate and to get it to loo...

It's that time of year again--time to start crafting Christmas ornaments! I decided to give something a little different a try. A while back I used #6 clear plastic from cookie containers and take out containers to make homemade shrinky dinks . I decided it would be fun to make ornaments using this process. Snowflakes seemed like a good idea since they are clear-ish in the real world. So I gathered up some supplies--a craft knife (I used an xacto brand craft knife , the box cutter also in the picture didn't make the cut--literally), a scissors , a cutting board, my #6 plastic sheets harvested from the flat bottoms of bakery containers (you could use real Shrinky Dink sheets ), and some print outs of snowflake templates that weren't too intricate. I picked some from a Google search that used all straight lines, and then I blew them up in Word so they were about 5-6 inches wide. I knew from experience that this recycled plastic shrinks a lot (to less than half th...

So I've made a few projects with out of DIY Shrinky Dink plastic made from number 6 plastic containers (the containers I'm using are from the local grocery store's bakery department), and I've made a few projects with alcohol ink . This time, I used alcohol ink to decorate shrinky dinks. Have I exhausted all possible projects with these two media--not even remotely. They are both so easy and fun to work with.  I promise that they'll be back again. If you want to make your own decorated plastic pendants, you'll need to start with some number 6 plastic.  I cut apart the container using an electric scissors  to keep my lines as straight as possible since I was making squares and rectangles.  I punched holes at the top of each piece of plastic with a regular hole punch so the plastic could be strung up after it was shrunk. I laid the plastic pieces out onto a cookie sheet lined with foil (it's never stuck before, but just in case).  I preh...

So I had a bunch of shrinky dink charms....what do I do with them?  Make a charm bracelet of course.  I just happened to have a jewelry making kit that I picked up at Walmart on clearance for $1 that included pieces for a charm bracelet, a necklace and a set of earrings.  The charm bracelet had a bunch of similar round charms, so I thought I'd cannibalize the parts and make my own personalized charm bracelet.  But you could easily make it yourself with a 7 or 8 inch chunk of cable chain from the craft store, a lobster clasp, and some jump rings. The best part of this bracelet is that the charms are practically free to make (aside from the cookies I have to buy), so when I come up with a new idea or get sick of a charm, I can swap it out very easily. If you missed the posts where I explained how these were made, check them out: Homemade Shrinky Dinks and this week's Shrinky Dink Tardis Necklace .

A couple of weeks ago, I made my first foray into Homemade Shrinky Dink art.  I had so much fun, even though I had no idea what I was doing.  I learned pretty quickly that outlines worked really well, so I knew almost immediately that I wanted to try some more--and the first idea on my list--a tardis pendant.  For those who don't know, the iconic blue police box is Dr. Who's timemachine/spaceship.  Tardis stands for: Time And Relative Dimension In Space. To make my tardis necklace dream a reality, I needed to go buy some more cookies at our local grocery store (such a hardship--they were delicious).  I then cut the flat pieces out of the cookie container (made from #6 plastic) and placed it over a couple of outlines of the tardis that I nicked (Dr. Who is a British TV show afterall) off the internet. I carefully traced the outlines with Sharpie. I made a black one of just the front, and a blue outline in perspective.  I punched holes in ...

As soon as I heard you could use any clear #6 plastic to create your very own homemade shrinky dinks, I've been checking the bottoms of food containers.  I finally got one with some flat surfaces that was labeled #6! I knew right away what today's project would be.  I should preface this with the fact that this project was very much a learning process for me; I've never used real shrinky dinks, so I was excited to try out the recycle version.  I grabbed a bunch of Sharpies and lined a pan with foil.  I preheated the oven to 350 degrees and got to work. I cut out all of the flat surfaces of the container and a couple of the ridged edges just to see what would happen.  I got to work drawing and quickly learned that the fine tip Sharpies didn't draw very well on the plastic.  I switched to regular Sharpies and drew some hearts and leaves and some cute stick figures.   Then I did some artsy patterns on the ridged plastic.  I didn't put too...